


Miranda

by PoisonedPrada



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Established Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs, F/F, Mentioned Miranda Priestly/Andrea Sachs, Mirandy Bingo, Mirandy Week, Mirandy Year of Fun & Frolics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-05-16 17:22:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 61,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14815614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoisonedPrada/pseuds/PoisonedPrada
Summary: You know how sometimes we enter someone's world for a brief moment.How books give us a glimpse of a night, a month, a second in characters life?That is how I often felt with Miranda, a sliver of her grandiose life and yet I often found I was all of it..A love affair In two parts told by Andrea & Miranda





	1. Miranda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~
> 
> I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,  
> 
> 
> or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.  
> 
> 
> I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,  
> 
> 
> in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Our drive from the Hamptons was quiet and filled with traffic. The heat was murky and wet.  
“Can we stop for water?” I ask.  
“You have a bottle next to you,” she clips back. She’s annoyed, traffic and direct sunlight annoy her, the bridge of her nose is crunched up and her normally ocean blue eyes have a tint of grey.  
“It’s warm, can we please just stop?” I insist.  
She took the next exit, speeding effectively in her silken new navy blue CLA 550 that she bought in lieu of the two communal cars she would have to give him as a divorce accord.  
He didn’t fight the divorce, he readily signed the papers, within a forth night. He got to keep the condo in the Berkshires and the two cars. 

“Did you love him?” I asked. She had never explained more than was said in the first few dates and I never had dared to ask, “when you married him? Did you love him?”

The coastal sun shines on her diamond eyes, she squints a little, the rays surpass her dark cat eye sunglasses. Miranda radiates the kind of calm that comes with having grown up in wealth and she possesses the kind of beauty that accompanies class and never having to worry about the future.

She looks at me and smiles, a longing smile. “No,” she replies.  
Here in the metals chaises of a roadside café, wearing jeans and oversized sweaters our ages peek out, they seep from under our consciousness, her late forties pop in the laugh lines splashed across her eyes and the thin veins painted in her fair hands contrast in comparison to the absence of both on mine. I can tell she’s examining, the why of the question. She’s looking me up and down, the way mothers do when they are trying to determine if their offspring is lying. I felt her gaze in my big city features, my large dark eyes that often cried for home and my light olive skin.  
“Why did you marry him?”  
Here we could see our differences, the beauty I possessed was forced into elegance, non-distinguishable at first but evident upon inspection. It too had the calm of being brought up in wealth until it didn’t, until you could see in my eyes the storm brewing, it was loud in my long curls of brown and the curves of my body.

“Because it was a transaction, a social implication, and he always made me laugh,” she concluded honestly.  
“We’ve never spoken about him,” I say capping the now empty water bottle and opening the deli sandwich we have bought.

“You have never asked.”  
“I didn’t want to intrude, I …” I don’t know what to say. My long fingers fidget with the wrapper, my eyes dart down and I wipe my hands on the dark jeans I’m wearing. She hands me a napkin but it’s too late.  
“I did care for him, I still do. He always made me feel better, it was easy to be around him, he unlike me is the life of the party, he was wild and magnetic and I thought I wanted that after my second husband who was dull.”

“Did he love you?” I asked.

She takes the last piece of sandwich from my fingers and considers the question. “I don’t know.”  
“Why now?” I ask and realize the question doesn’t make any sense.  
She reads my mind and answers anyway, “Why divorce him now? Why cheat on him now? Would I have done it even if it wasn’t you? That’s what you really want to know right? Did I fall out of love within a week, a month, last year? Did he ever really make me happy? “  
I nod, I did want to know all of it.  
The hypocrisy of it all killed me, I wanted to know if she was really in love with me. I wanted to be assured of it. I knew deep inside me, in every though that I may eventually leave her, that I could not stay, I was not as strong as she thought I was. Nevertheless, this moment like the day before was not it, not yet. 

“Everything after the first year was hard. He once told me I never called his name when we made love, I never smiled when he came home and I drank too much when he was. He said I made it unbearable for him, and so we never really lived together after that. He’d charm up at parties and he would accompany me when I asked, nothing more. I never cheated on him, I never wanted to repeat the story. I can’t say I would not have if you hadn’t come along, but I find it doubtful, there was something about you. It was frail and breakable, and it wanted to be strong. I wanted to hold you from the first moment I saw you, I wanted you for a long time. But if you hadn’t accepted dinner; perhaps I never would have asked for a divorce.”  
We stay quiet after her answer, I do it because I’m not sure what to follow that with. Do I ask her to tell me where they met? Why there was no pictures of her marriage, do I ask her what her friends think of me, or do I keep quiet?

“I don’t want to talk about him anymore. I know our relationship hasn’t been normal, I know I have asked a lot of you up until now. That I’m sure these past years you have wanted to ask, to know if I loved him, if I ever had. That you graciously kept quiet when you wanted to know about the other half of my life, the man that shared my house and who had part of my past. I know he formed part of us too, but I don’t want him to anymore. I don’t want details, I want us to start new here, today. Is it too much?”

I look at the floor, “It is too much Miranda, but I love you and I have you now all to myself…. So…”  
I pause finding the right words that will be finite but kind, “I will make you a deal.”  
She cracks a sneer and the softest of chuckles, almost in-perceivable.  
“I won’t ask any more but one day far from now, I may ask again and I want you to promise me that you will tell me everything I want to know,” I look at her directly, night piercing into day, dark into light.  
“Fair enough,” she smiles, raising her hand as if she were the Queen getting crowned she whispers, “I promise,” and the moment ends.


	2. Paris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
> 
> I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
> 
> so I love you because I know no other way

***Three Years Before ***

“He has reconsidered,” Miranda said as she got out of the town car into the Valentino after party. Her voice was smooth and she whispered, if I hadn’t been close I would have missed the three words. I was close enough to feel the warmth radiate from her body, close enough to hold her hand if I dared.  
“Who?” I ask ignoring the cardinal rule of not asking Miranda anything. Too many rules have been ignored this past week in Paris as is.  
“Stephan, the divorce, … thank you for last night,” Miranda manages to say before the hungry hoard of reports and journalists surround us both.  
The party like any other fashion event is full of smiles and flashes and flutes of champagne. I’m technically off work, but I’ve chosen to stay and trail my boss because being close to Miranda would guarantee that Christian would be nowhere near.  
“Andrea, would you mind driving with us to the hotel?” Miranda asks a few hours later, tired of lighting up the night, social circle after social circle. I know that she has barely slept and that the smile she wears is probably fading.  
I nod, we ride in silence, then exit the car in silence. I want to say that I’m happy for her, I want to break the deafening silence that has formed between us but I don’t know how to. Suddenly the moments keep advancing as we share the elevator to the penthouse and then without a warning she beacons for me to accompany into the suite. She’s going to give me more tasks, she’s going to tell me I have to go fetch Stephan or buy something for the twins.  
She doesn’t say a word, instead she pours me a glass of wine and smiles.  
“Thank you, for everything,” she sounds out every single word in her elegant upper Manhattan speech.  
“Of course,” I say. She stalks toward me, still wearing the black Chanel dress that hugs every single inch of her waist and she smiles again.  
I lean in and kiss her, I don’t know why I do it. Every single cell in my brain is screaming for me not to. I do it anyway as if I knew she was expecting it. It is then that I realize she was planning it, she had thrown the bait and I had taken it. She reciprocates the kiss like we have been doing this forever. Her hands wrap around my own black dress, the petticoat and entangle in my dark brown locks.  
“Miranda,” I whisper. I’m unsure if it’s a reproach, a sign for her to stop or if I’m simply repeating the name to myself to make sure this is real.  
At that moment, I realize why I’ve stayed with her, why I have endured as her assistant, why I let Nate walk away, why I let Lily distance herself, why I haven’t talked to my friends and why I keep against my parent’s better advice working for her.  
I didn’t know it. I had been waiting for this moment. I had been waiting for this moment, every time she caressed my name, every time she glanced at me when she though I wasn’t looking, and the way she always accidently touched my hand when receiving the book would fruition into a kiss, into anything.  
We still didn’t say a word but her lips trailed kisses down my neck and onto my collar bone. In the back of my mind I thought of the divorce she had just saved and then all thoughts were erased when she started to unzip my dress. I flinched, she noticed. Her blue eyes locked with mine, questioning.  
“What if you think I’m still fat?” I say. The tension of the moment washes away. She laughs like I’ve never really heard her laugh, and then she kisses me again, sloppy and fast as she shakes her head and whispers, “Silly, you’re perfect.”  
I don’t argue because being told you’re perfect by the top fashion editor in the world qualifies as expert opinion. All I can think of as the heavy black fabric falls to the floor is that this is really the job a million girls would kill for, for Miranda Priestly to be kneeling at the edge of a bed pleasuring my body. I forget everything about that moment, who she is, who I am, what we’re doing here. When the waves ripple through me, her eyes look pleased at me and I realize she has entirely too much clothes. I manage to get her out of the dress, it pools at the edge of her feet and then it is I who worships her body, the expanses of cream colored skin that match her face, and the soft shudders as I trail my fingers down her body and wrap my lips on her breasts.

We don’t talk about it the next morning when we board first class. She doesn’t utter a word when I sit next to her instead of my assigned seat and her hand for a second rests on my thigh.  
An office affair for the most powerful editor in print. Miranda was a fashion icon, a hurricane of a woman, and I was just Andrea Sachs.  
I felt like an usurper, a reader granted access to her story. I could read a few pages, I was a sliver of her world. That is how I felt when I was walking behind her, when she was firing orders at me in front of others, when I had to fetch her coffee and when her husband walked in, took her by the arm and walked way.  
Then when she would look up from her desk after I dropped the coffee and mouth, ‘I love you.’ When she’d tell me to program dinner at a fancy restaurant with Tom Ford or Vera Wang or someone and then say it was for us, when she would rest her head on my shoulder after we made love all night and say that I made her happy, I felt like her whole world. That sliver turned into a whole book, a series and I loved her too.

Of course, I knew it was wrong. I knew that even if her marriage was a sham, a show she was still married. I knew that I was the ‘other woman’, the ‘dirty secret’ and at the worst of times I wondered if she had done this before. If there was an ex-assistants club I would belong to in a few months.

“Have you ever done this before?” I asked her the first time we ever had the townhouse to ourselves. It was two months into the affair and Stephan was away as he often was on a trip.  
She shook her head, as Cara served us spaghetti. When the maid departed she answered, “Fucked an assistant? No,” she answered.  
“You’re the first one, the first one I liked enough to risk so much,” she answers and looks away.  
I don’t know if she looks away because she's lying or because she's shy but I don’t pry anymore.  
Instead we eat the long flat fettuccine in silence. It’s a simple creation dolled with olive oil and cut tomatoes. She fills my glass and hers and puts the bottle in the trash.  
The following morning, I wake before her, I am no longer startled to wake up next to Miranda, I no longer think of her as my boss when she’s lying there half covered in a sheet and sound asleep. She’s beautiful even when she sleeps.  
There was so much I wanted to know about Miranda, I realized as I lay there watching her sleep. It scared me in a sense because it had been slightly over two months since we kissed in Paris. It scared me that I thought about her all the time and I somehow wanted her to do the same. I wanted to know why she had dared to kiss me, I wanted to know why she went on with this affair, I wanted to know if she had other affairs. I wanted to know what her relationship with her husband was.  
There were no pictures of her and him, no wedding pictures, nothing to denote a happy home and yet they could not be so far apart and still fake a marriage, could they?  
She was breathing rhythmically, the top of her shoulders peaked out from the white comforter and her silver hair panned out on the pillow. She was beautiful, she had always been and yet I had never thought about her in that way until she kissed me. I had told Miranda that she was a mere distraction but now I wasn’t sure.  
In the light sunshine that managed to slip in, in the silence of her mahogany furniture and her white sheets I wondered what it really meant.  
It meant nothing. We were just sex. I was just a flirtation and she was a distraction. She was my boss and I was forbidden and we were playing along.  
I slipped my hand between her thighs because I didn’t want to think about what this all meant and she gasped started but not unhappy to be woken up in such a manner. Rolling over slowly, giving me more access to her she said, “I always want to wake up to you.”  
I tried to ignore the implication of her words but they roll around in my head. Instead of answering I pump my fingers in and out. Her body answers rhythmically for her but she says nothing more, she closes her eyes and comes onto my fingers.  
When it’s over she opens her eyes slowly, her eyes are a storm of blue, broken diamonds rushing together to be whole. She gently traces my lips, it’s not lustful, it’s whimsical as if she knew what I had been thinking about before the sex took over. I lick my fingers one by one and she watches licking her lips in return.  
“Andrea, I love you,” she lets it slip and then she quiets.  
“Miranda… I…” I trip over my words, I lay back down resting my head on my hand and face the Ice Queen that seems to be melting.  
“I think I have always loved you.”  
She tries to conceal a smile, like the one time when I changed my style and she tried to hide a smile. I know better, leaning in to kiss her.

“I lied last night,” she suddenly says.  
“I know,” I say and I do. I know that she has had an affair before.  
“I long time ago, with an intern. It was mistake. A one night stand. I wanted to be honest with you. I never have again.”  
“I know.” I say again and I do. I do know.  
“With you I always know.”  
We don’t make love for the rest of the morning instead she asks about me. She wants to know everything, wrapped in a silk black robe and coffee cup in hand she tucks her feet under as she mimics my pose and asks about me.  
“What do you do when you’re not with me?” she wonders.  
I don’t want to answer, I want to tell her that I think about her, about work. That I obsess over fashion magazines, that conjure up outfits and spend half my salary on clothes.  
“I think of you, and I also clean my house.”  
She smiled, the broad condescending smile that both infuriated me and captivated me at the same time. She shook her head light and stood up in chair, resting her thin body against the plush headboard, “that’s not what I mean. If we lived together.”  
“That will never happen,” I interrupted.  
She looked over and me, something akin to hurt shows in her face.  
“If we lived together, what would I see? If we spent every night, every morning, every day of our lives in the same house, what would I find you doing? Are you an early sleeper, do you sleep with the TV on? Do you like to read alone? Do you pace around the house? Do you paint, do you clean obsessively?”  
I laughed, “I don’t know.” It seems silly to answer.  
She tucked a flyaway hair behind my ear. It was her favorite thing to do, a demonstration of tenderness perhaps and I had grown to live for it. Even though I hated my hair tucked back, I had learned to love the soft tingling sensation that it sent down the tip of my ear to the top of my head. My breath hitches.  
“Why do you want to know?”  
“I want to know you,” she poured herself some more coffee and propped her feet onto the table ledge, the window was open.  
“You do know me,” I answered, “perhaps better than anyone else. “


	3. Nigel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
> 
> and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.
> 
> To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
> 
> like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.

“An-dre-a,” she called me into her office more often than Emily nowadays but it wasn’t to execute a passionate office romance scene like in the movies, we didn’t close the door and pin each other to it, we didn’t knock over the pencil on her expertly decorated desk and have sex. This wasn’t that kind of affair. In fact, I often wondered as I ran downstairs, jumped into the company car and paraded all over the city’s fashion houses what kind of affair this was.  
I wanted it to be a steamy, lustful one. I wanted to years from now say that on my first job after college I had a passionate affair with one of the most powerful women in the country, I wanted to say it was a girl crush, a power crush and nothing more. I shook my head at my own thoughts.  
“Andy, Andy? We’re here…” Roy said twice calmly over the divider.  
“Oh, thanks,” I said jumping out of the sedan and into the townhouse to deliver the book. Miranda would be out on some fancy dinner party, Stephan was in Germany with some stockbrokers and the only people in the house were probably asleep.   
“I’ll be out in a minute,” I threw out at the driver.  
He nodded and maneuvered as always, a perfect parking in the already packed streets of Manhattan.   
The house was indeed silent as I had foreshadowed, it was dimly lit with only a light in the foyer and a visible light from the sitting room where Miranda always waits. The upstairs seemed dark, and I took a deep breath. Echoes of us having dinner, of us laughing in the living room, of us here come at me from shadows and the overwhelming desire to cry strains my eyes. I walk briskly to drop the book in the table with the flowers which by now I have figured out. Instead of finding flowers there I find an envelope with my name on it and a single rose. It is a simple note, on stock paper, “I want you to know, that I’m thinking of you, right now.”  
That is all it said. I took the flower and the note and stuffed it in my black purse. I exited the house faster than ever, almost tripping as I flew down the stairs and into the Roy’s driver window.  
“I’m going to walk home tonight,” I say.  
“Andy it’s late,” he answers.  
“It’s okay Roy, I go home late all the time,” I say.  
He seems conflicted, a small wrinkle of worry appears in his forehead, he is middle aged, probably Miranda’s age, maybe older. His green eyes and square features point out that he was probably attractive when he was younger. I never have asked how he came to work for Miranda, how he became a chauffeur, I didn’t even know if he had a family. I wondered if Miranda knew? I wondered if she cared.  
“I have strict instruction from Miranda not to let you go home alone, Andy. She … worries about you.”  
He throws out the word ‘worries’ like he’s unsure he should say it, like it was not supposed to be mentioned. He seems confused by his employer’s new concern for a replaceable assistant.   
“Then lie to her,” I say defiantly and walk off. I’m annoyed, I’m angry but I don’t know at who. Part of me thinks it’s at him for telling me Miranda worries, part of it is at Miranda for actually worrying, for leaving love notes, for caring. I shake my head again, I do that often now. I hold conversation on my own, about her.  
The walk from her elegant neighborhood to my humble apartment is not just a walk, it’s a walk and subway ride and more walking. It’s almost 1 am when I finally make it to my door and past three when I fall asleep to get up two hours later and make it in time before she arrives. It now takes me an hour to get ready, to choose the right outfit, straighten my hair, and meticulously put make up on. Foundation to cover any blemishes, highlighter to peak my cheekbones, blush, concealer, eyeliner, lashes, shadow, lip stain.   
“I remember you wanted a gold star from her,” Nigel sais as we are walking down the employee cafeteria. “I think you have earned more than that now?” he smirks and sits down with me sans an invitation.  
“Hello Nigel,” I say perkily trying to humor the statement he has said. Is he hinting at something?  
“Have you?” he asks.  
“Have I what?” I say playing dumb.  
He looks at me, runs his hand over his head and take a sip of some calorie free tea he purchased.  
“Have you earned the gold star?”   
I smile and shrug, “Well, I don’t think she hates me anymore.”  
“I don’t think she ever did,” he states.  
“Andy, I have known Miranda for a long time. She can be addicting. Her pull is magnetic and even though she barely deigns to notice people, they follow her, adoring fans, a million …”  
“A million girls who would want to have my job I know,” I say and take a few bites out of a lettuce wrap. It doesn’t taste good and I look at my watch. Lunch was over.  
“More than that Andrea, they would want to have Miranda. The way you have her now…” he pauses and gets up at the same time I do.  
“But… you’re both … promise me you’ll be careful?” he whispers and walks side by side to throw out the contents of whatever he didn’t eat into the large trashcan by the glass doors.  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about Nigel, Miranda barely talks to me,” I say laughing trying to keep the despair out of my voice and he nods.  
“Of course.”  
It’s an odd conversation that I don’t tell Miranda about. I don’t see Miranda for two weeks. She took a summer vacation with her daughters to California. It was an odd move for the fashion diva but Caroline and Cassidy wanted to see Disneyland and she agrees to take them before they grow up into full-fledged teenagers and they don’t want to hang out with her. She takes Emily just in case she needs something edited, someone contacted or someone competent and she take Gabriela the girls new caretaker, but all in all it’s a quiet family affair and I don’t belong in that family.   
The magazine runs smoothly without her there, it is a boring summer issue that has for the most part been put together. Besides she’ll be back in time to last minute edit, approve and send everyone into frenetic last minute changes anyway.   
We don’t talk at all during those two weeks, and I breathe a sigh of relief, perhaps this is exactly what an affair should be. This is how mistresses are treated, forgotten about and only there for a good time. It is ironic that it makes me feel relieved that I’m only a good time. It must say something about my self-esteem but I think it is more about my fear.   
When she gets back, she looks tired and sad and she asks me to go with her to have a drink after work. I agree of course because I always agree. I can never say no to her.  
It’s Friday, she has been back for a week, she almost fired the new Assistant Art Director and she had the whole cover art redone but she surprisingly left the rest of the magazine alone.  
“Let’s get away for the weekend, hmmm?” she asks putting her index finger under my chin and asking. Her eyes are pools of blue, clear blue ocean that I could always get lost in. Her words asked, almost demanded but her eyes plead, they plead with a certain sadness that is all entirely strange to see in her and I nod.   
“Where do you want to go?” I ask.  
“Maine, let’s go to Maine,” she says and follows it with, “did you know I was born there?”  
I shake my head a smile. Her fingers are still under my chin, “I was. My mother’s family owned mills there and my father was a banker from London. He always stayed in London and my mother would take sabbaticals in Maine. I was born there and so was my sister Anna.”  
“So, will we go see your childhood home?” I ask as she finally sets her hand down and nods.  
“Well, it’s not the cute cabin on a mountain type but yes we’ll go see the state where I was born. I’ve always had it all Andrea, everything but a loving family. That is why making the girls happy is so important to me.”  
“oh, Miranda,” I say sadly and my heart breaks for her. I want to hold her and kiss her but I can’t. We’re in public and she’s a public figure. She picks me up in her blue Mercedes again. She loves to drive that car more than she loves to be picked up by Roy but she never drives in the city.  
“It’s too stressful and it wouldn’t be fast enough. Parking is a nightmare,” she tells me when I ask her why.  
“That is what money is for Andrea, to pay people to do the things we hate to do.”  
“Like hold your umbrella?” I joke referring to the fact that every time it rains she has someone to hold her umbrella.  
“Exactly,” she says jokingly and when we finally arrive hours later I realize she wasn’t kidding. The house is not a house at all but a beautiful state with large driving roads lined in pine trees and rocks that lead to a large main house. I’m sure it could fit ten townhomes. She smiles, “I told you it wasn’t a cabin in the woods. Did you not believe me?”  
“What do you pay me for Miranda?” I ask suddenly confused by all her money.  
“I’m not sure I get what you’re implying?”   
She gets out of the car and opens the trunk.   
“I’m not either,” I admit.   
“I pay my assistant to work at Runway,” she remarks the word assistant and then pauses, “I don’t pay Andrea Sachs to be with me, do I Andrea?”  
I shake my head.  
She takes the suitcase out of the trunk and a maid rushes out, falling over herself to help the silver haired editor.   
“Ms. Priestly! You’re early… did you speed?” the friendly thin maid jokes and to my surprise Miranda laughs.  
“I may have Terry, I may have.”  
“Your mother would be mad…”   
“Yes… mama would be mad, has Lucia been here lately?” Miranda asks carrying on a conversation as we trail up the stairs into a huge foyer. It is dark, the wood is dark brown almost cherry black. It shines in the poor lighting and the carpet is a rustic, elegant shade of blue.  
There is a large crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling but no one turns it on and we walk straight past the foyer into the edge of the left side stairs.

“Did you make dinner Terry?” Miranda asks almost tentatively.  
“Yes, I made your favorite dish, if you and your guest would like to dine. Javier will be back tomorrow and everyone has the weekend off. I’m afraid it’s just me tonight Ms. Priestly.”  
“That is perfect Terry, we’ll grab dinner in a bit. Don’t worry about us. This is Andrea by the way, a good friend. Andrea this is Terry, she’s almost like a mother.”  
“You’re too kind Miranda,” the maid answers shifting her formal answer for Miranda’s given name and a smile.   
“She seems nice,” I say.  
“Terry has been with the family since I was about 12. She really is a wonderful woman and perhaps the only one that cared about us back then.”  
“Let’s settle down, I’ll show you to the room,” Miranda starts up the stairs. I’ve never seen her so quiet, so different. She wasn’t mad, or annoyed, she didn’t need twenty Hermes scarfs delivered, she was sad. It was a palpable nostalgia and I could not pinpoint from what. I wanted to make it better.   
The following morning as I was sitting in the balcony of the main room, having some coffee; she gets up and wraps a silk robe around her thin frame. She has some minimal makeup on from the night before, and her hair is falling in chunks around her face. She has reading glasses on, the ones she wears at the office to read the magazine. 

“It’s a year today,” she whispers softly sitting down at the small metal table and serving herself some coffee.  
She slides a thin red iconic box across the table. The Cartier logo gives it away, what I don’t know or rather what I want to pretend not to know is why she’s giving me this.  
“A year of what?” I sense it coming, an anniversary of sorts. I run my fingers on the silky surface of the box and quickly quiet her answer.  
“Weren’t we going to go see the art gallery today? We better get ready, I’d like to stop by the breakfast place we saw on our way here. We can do anything you want for dinner. I’ll even dress up for that seafood restaurant you wanted to make reservations to.” I filled the space with words in an effort to stop whatever was coming. I wanted to fill all the pregnant pauses, I had learned something in journalism school and that was that people left with silence say more than they should.  
“Andrea, I love you,” she says and though she has said it before this time it’s different. This time it is deep and out of breath, like it took all her soul to say that. This time she says it like it can change our future. She looks at me like we can be more than lovers, like we’re meant for each other.  
It turns out I hadn’t been careful. I had promised Nigel I would. I promised that I would be careful although I’m not sure what I was supposed to be careful of; getting caught, getting hurt, falling down the stairs? What was I supposed to be careful of? Was it this? Was I supposed to make sure she didn’t fall in love for me? Was I supposed to make sure we stayed a simple, irrelevant affair? Be careful what? Of falling in love with Miranda?  
I didn’t answer. I rested my head against the cushion and took in the beauty of the state.  
I didn’t know what she wanted me to answer. I didn’t want to open that box, I didn’t know why we should acknowledge the anniversary of cheating on someone else. I felt a terrible unstoppable guilt and yet, I wanted to say it back.  
I loved her too.  
I had known it for a while now. I had known it since I let Nate leave me for her, I had known it but I didn't want to acknowledge it because I was afraid. I was deeply afraid to face it, what would I do with that love? I was afraid she didn’t love me back, but now she did. What did it mean?   
I shook my head slightly and walked into the shower, “I’m going to shower and then I’m going to do a little bit of work while you get ready,” I yelled as I was turning the water on, I did it like it was the most natural thing.   
“Okay,” she answered back loud enough for me to hear.  
When I exited the shower, she was still facing the state, I half expected her to send me off on my own or say that we should drive home early but she didn’t. She simply turned to me and smiled, “I’ll be really in half an hour?”   
I nodded back and walked out of the room.  
When I came back a few minutes before the half hour she was brushing her hair, dressed in a long black jumpsuit and a long thin gold chain. The red box was still sitting at the table but the woman who had bared her heart earlier was gone.   
“I think I’m going to skip breakfast and meet you at the gallery, I have a few things to do. Is that okay?”  
I nod and we walk out into the car together.

At the end of the day she falls asleep quickly, the soft sound of her breathing creating a calming rhythm that I could get used to. I open the red box, it’s a silver pendant at the end of a thin chain. The pendant is simple, an angel holding what seemed like a rose. It was beautiful I caressed it between my thumb and forefinger only then realizing that there was an inscription on the back side.   
It was a set of six numbers. It was today's date from a previous year. The tears roll down unwanted and I can’t stop them. I put the pendant on because I have to. When she sees it the next morning draped around my neck like it had always been there she doesn’t say a thing but she smiles ever so softly.

“I think I love her,” I tell Nigel because there is no one else to tell.  
I sit across from him at the art desk. He casts down his eyes and looks at the dark green floor that Irv just renovated. Nigel hated the new floor, he told me when the color had been chosen. His silence worries me, he keeps looking down at the floor before bending forward and looking at a print of Kate Spade’s new collection.

“Does she make you happy?” he asks.   
I nod, I didn’t think he would ask that. I didn’t think he would focus on what made me happy. Half of me wanted him to throw out warnings, and advice on how to leave her.  
“Then what worries you?” he asks. He’s just as unpredictable as she is.  
His question is so right and wrong that it catches me of guard. The small child in me wants to say, “Everything, everything worries me. The fact that I’m committing a sin, a capital sin. I love someone who belongs to someone else. That although it didn’t make it okay, it gave me solace that it was only an affair, college fun. It was not supposed to mean anything.”

I don’t say what I’m thinking, I simply smile and compress my thoughts.  
“She’s married Nigel, she doesn’t belong to me.”  
Nigel raises an eyebrow and shakes his head, “You love her and I think she loves you, stop overthinking it. It’s going to hurt if you leave her now, and it’s going to hurt if you leave her later.”  
I rest against the chair, closing my eyes and letting out a long sigh, “I know.”  
“What is the other option?” he asks.  
“What if it’s more than leaving each other at some point. What if this changes our lives?”  
“And that is a bad thing how? Andrea, let it run its course. You let it happen you can’t back down now. Or… if you do it has to be fast and forever. You would have to do it now. But before you do, before you run over to her office and hand in your resignation,” he pauses his speech as if pondering what to say.  
“I’ve never seen Miranda really care about anyone except her daughters. You know what she asked me other day? She asked me if I knew what your favorite type of chocolate was? And then tried to sound nonchalant about it. Something about getting her assistants chocolates for Christmas.”  
I nod and walk out of his office without a single word.  
~


	4. Lisa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we could rave on, darling, you and I,
> 
> until the stars tick out a lullaby
> 
> about each cosmic pro and con;
> 
> nothing changes, for all the blazing of
> 
> our drastic jargon, but clock hands that move
> 
> implacably from twelve to one.

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Lisa said turning the glass of red wine in her hand gently, it left streaks, legs as the sommeliers like to call them. Her green cat like eyes stared at me from across the bar table and she seemed to demand that I listen.   
“She’s going to leave you, or you’re going to leave her and then it’s going to hurt more than it would now.”  
I wanted to say that no one asked her opinion, but I did. I had in a subtle way wanted her to tell me this, to tell me I was wrong, I went in search of someone who would tell me what I wanted to hear. Lisa my mildly liberal cousin would be that person. She was liberal enough to understand, to keep a secret, to let me live my life but raised under the same conservative flag of Midwestern hypocrisy to tell me that I should not be doing it.  
“If not for moral reasons for sanity,” she clarified.  
Lisa wasn’t religious and she was just judgmental enough to give me validation of leaving Miranda.  
“I love her,” I added.  
“I believe it, and she may love you but she’s not only 23 years older than you, she’s also married, powerful and well a she…” her hand flips and she pushes up the remaining wine in her glass.  
“Ah! what a scandal,” I say throwing my head back to finish the vodka in my glass.  
She nods understanding the frustration in my voice and signals the bartender to refresh my drink. Lisa is in her early thirties, fair skin and dark hair. She has the kind of high cheekbone face and large mysterious eyes to call her attractive. She’s thin and blessed just in the right areas for all the men she meets to fall head over heels or at least give her drinks on the house, as this bartender was doing.  
She had been married, she was forcefully married at 18 because she got pregnant in high school. Her mother would not let a child be born out of wedlock. Seemed fair in a conservative Midwest community and she let herself be dragged into it because what else was she going to do.  
“I feel like I’m living in the 1900s,” she told me once.  
The child did not make term and all the angst that she had felt turned into oblivious sadness. Lisa and her high school sweetheart got divorced three years later.   
“You would never get married again, and you live with Tony who is also older than you,” I pause as the martini is dropped, “is that not the same?”  
She purses her lips, the thin quiver of thought in them. I greedily reach out for the alcohol that makes everything softer and calmer, “I suppose so,” she accepts.  
“Then?” I ask. Half of me hopes that she tells me I’m right, that it is exactly the same. That moreover we live in a much more equal, accepting and fair world than when she was 18; the other half of me hopes she tells me that my love with Miranda is doomed.  
“But, my dear cousin, the difference is that this is a socially acceptable. As unfair as that may be, life is unfair, religion is unfair and if I know you at all I’d say that with time it will weight on you more that on her.”  
I don’t answer her back, instead I nod and turn toward the fine oak that covers the dimly lit bar. I swirl the base of the now almost empty martini against it as she had done with her wine earlier. I can feel the warmth of the vodka creeping up my body creating a fog in my mind and the many answers that I would have said staggered there. I knew she was right. I knew that deep inside this is what I had wanted to hear. I had wanted someone who would try to speak sense to me. I had wanted it and she had given it.  
I nod because I know she’s right. She looks at me with longing, as if she feels sad for me. I try to smile but I can’t, a melancholic pursing of my lips shows up instead and I bat my eyes to hide the tears that seem to trickle out regardless. She ordered another round and the more alcohol numbs the aches of my heart.

Socially acceptable a laughable argument. What is really socially acceptable? Society has changed its norms on what it considers socially acceptable, hundreds of times over the course of years. Yet I knew Lisa would always win. I knew it because a similar variation of those words escaped Miranda’s lips a few days later over late-night conversation on the layout of the book.

She stopped mid-sentence when she realized the implication of her words.   
Nigel looked at me, glasses hanging from his nose and there is surprise in his gaze.  
“Andrea,” she says softly. It feels like she’s dolling out pity and not trying to withdraw her words.  
“You’re right,” I say. There is split second in which I know she wants to reach out to me a brief moment in which she almost doesn’t care Nigel is there.  
“Miranda,” Jocelyn interrupts with a shy nock on the glass door. Miranda looks up and away from me, Jocelyn knows this better be good or the Ice Queen will be annoyed for the interruption. 

“Lagerfeld is pulling the Wedding collection.”  
“The one we did the photoshoot with?” Miranda asks redundantly because there is no other wedding collection to mention. The low pitch in her voice alludes to the fact that she is not waiting for an answer and therefor a skilled reader of Miranda, Jocelyn does not give her one.   
“Get him on the phone,” she barks and we’re not sure who she is talking to. My bet was on Jocelyn but Jocelyn looks like a deer in headlights. I murmur, “Got it,” before Miranda can utter a word. I walk briskly out of the office and yell as I always do, “I got Karl.”  
She takes the call, because if there is someone you never leave on the line it’s Karl, head of the Chanel empire.   
While she chats to him trying to convince him to leave a few pieces, telling him how much she loved the collection, I think over the careless words she said.

“That girl is only with him for a moment. She’s a gold digger, either she leaves him for someone younger or he leaves her for someone better.”

When the call is done, there is silence from her office. Loud, deafening silence. Unaltered silence, so palpable it can be cut with a knife.   
“Emily,” Miranda finally calls after what seems like an eternity but was only an hour. Emily rushes over, pen and paper tripping over herself like she always does and moments later Miranda exits the office outpacing Emily like she always does with her velvet Prada pumps and a turquoise wrap dress.  
I hand over her coat, a black Burberry piece and a matching bag. She looks at me for a brief second, her eyes shining with something I could not detect. She has reservations with Stephan, the moment she walks out of that office it signifies the validation of those words she dropped. Words that can never be fully picked up again. The moment she walks out, I’m going to doubt every single word of love she’s said over the past year. I’m going to wonder if it was just lust. She lied once, she lies to her husband, we lie to the world all the time why wouldn’t she lie to me? 

“Andrea you’re bringing the book tonight, right?” she questions.  
I have lost the ability for words, so I simply nod.  
Emily looks outraged and impatient and Miranda finally decides to put her out of her misery and say, “That’s all.”  
I have a million things to catch up after she leaves. Apparently, the call with Lagerfeld led to dresses being shipped from Paris, and he was keeping the collection but withdrawing four dresses. The call also led to re-touching of the photographs and that required me to run all over the photography department to make sure we got the slides and the RAW files before they were re-edited. Those tasks kept me busy for a few hours and when I finally glanced at the $10,000 Chanel boyfriend watch Miranda had insisted I accept, it was past seven-thirty. I got some coffee from the cafeteria that was almost closing and took the lonely elevator to wait another hour for the book. Then I saw Emily, she was still at her desk.  
“Emily, I’m not feeling very well. Would you please run the book over tonight?” I ask.  
She eyes me suspiciously, her straight red locks are somewhat out of place and she looks tired.   
“Why would I want to do that? Haven’t you taken over all my tasks, since Paris. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were her favorite?” her voice is full of disdain and annoyance. She’s right.   
“Miranda doesn’t have favorites,” I answer and then after I am met with silence I offer an apology, “but you’re right I have been trying to gain favor. I’ll owe you? Please? Any task you don’t want to do for a week?”  
“It’s not worth me risking her wrath if you don’t show up tonight,” Emily asserts.  
“She won’t even notice,” I lie.  
“Mirada not notice? What planet do you live on?”  
“Please?”  
“Fine!” she stammers because deep inside Emily is just as kind as me. She’s just as kind as Miranda but this world we live in is competitive and untrusting.   
“Thank you,” I say and grab my bag.   
It had suddenly become too much, too soon. I found myself alone, in my apartment. I had lost my friends and distanced my family. I could not call Nigel because I’m not sure what he would say, I told you so? I looked at the kitchen, hunger made a noise in my stomach but I was too sad and angry to eat. I saw an opened bottle of Vodka. Grey goose and anything sounded good.   
I sat there with the noise of the city and the burn of alcohol to numb whatever heartache I was feeling. I had promised myself I would not fall in love with her. She was unreachable. She only wanted me as a toy, a distraction, why would I ever think that she really loved me? Even if she did, it was clear that she like me thought we would end up apart at some point. Wasn’t that the point of an affair?   
I surely didn’t expect her to keep me around for years. What did I think would happen, she’d buy me a condo in the city, take me out of work and keep me as her mistress? That actually didn’t sound so bad… I pause. It wasn’t her and it wasn’t me. I think back to Paris, how I had almost left in the middle of it all. I look back at how she hadn’t cared about Nigel either, and giver her rival a position that belonged to her friend.   
I have to stop seeing her every day. It has become an obsession, Nigel was right. She was magnetic, her poise, her elegance, her glamour it was alluring. Those things alone were bait enough, and then there was her words, whispered in my ear, her hands over my body. 

“I want a transfer to editorial,” I demand of her like I only do in bed. She looks up from her desk, she’s wearing black all over, a black midi dress and a bold gold necklace that brings out the beautiful azure of her eyes.   
“Good morning, Andrea,” she smiles and her gaze runs me up and down as if seizing a piece of cake to eat.  
I’m not sure if I’m angry at the words she said, the fact that she walked out to dine with Stephan or that she never called to apologize. If she had called, if she had said she was sorry, if she had said she didn’t mean it, if she hadn’t left me to ponder it alone over vodka and darkness then maybe I would have forgiven it.  
“Miranda, I want you to do this for me,” I say and hold out an envelope to her.  
“What is that? Some photos you’ll send to the press if I don’t?” her words are blades.  
“No, it’s my resignation. If you don’t want to transfer me then you can have my resignation. I hope you decide by Monday next week,” I say and my hands are shaking. I am full of adrenaline and dread. I clench my fists into balls so she doesn’t see how nervous I am. It was Friday and I would not see her over the weekend, I hoped two days would be enough for her to decide.  
“Is that so?” she smirks not taking the letter and watching it flop in the desk over her planner.  
“It is, and if you though I could do something like that, you don’t know me at all, my love,” I whisper and by now I’m so angry at her attitude, the way she’s suddenly treating me that I don’t care if I lose my job right there and then. I take a deep breath trying to center myself. Part of me thinks she’s almost enjoying this.   
“Take the rest of the day, Andrea,” she suddenly whispers and there is a trace of recognizable care in her voice.  
“Get some rest, you look tired. Have Roy drive you.”  
I nod and suddenly I do feel tired and she doesn’t look angry, she looks sad. Her gaze follows me until I leave the office and take my belongings. Luckily Emily was away doing something and I don’t have to answer any question. I think about walking past Roy when he meets me outside but I’m suddenly too tired, too weary, too broken to walk.   
“Thank you,” I say to him, the man with the green eyes, as he closes the door for me.

The glare of the skyscrapers and bright sunlight that reflects on the car window is too beautiful to miss. This is such a beautiful city, full of grandeur, splendor, history, passion. This is the city that John Lennon called the modern-day Rome, and the one Frank Sinatra sang about. This is the city of dreams, my dreams, this is the city that whispered to me since I was a teenager. I couldn’t let one bad love affair ruin it. I had to get past this, she was bright and beautiful but she wasn’t the sun. I’ll forget her, I know I will. Suddenly I felt like people feel in those stories where moments of clarity come over long car rides and absent glances out onto the window. I felt just like that. I had to distance myself, distance would bring peace.

As soon as I got home there was an email on my phone. Elias Clarke Human Resources. I stare at it for a long time, standing in the frame of my one bedroom apartment made of Ikea furniture. I was being transferred to editorial, but not at Runway I was being transferred to editorial at Conde Nast. I was being made assistant editor at Conde Nast, it would appear Miranda wasn’t sorry after all. Perhaps this is how forbidden affairs always end, they run their course and then someone ends up with a broken heart. I shook my head and managed to move front my position holding up the door. I was crying and I couldn’t understand why. There was a multitude of whys, I was crying because this meant that we were over and no matter how I had tried to deny it, I was completely, stupidly in love with her. I was crying because it would seem she didn’t care, she didn’t fight it, she didn’t try to keep me, she didn’t even want to say goodbye. I was crying as I held the bottle of vodka in my trembling hands again, because I felt alone. I was crying because all those word I had told myself about distance and peace were bullshit, I was heartbroken. I was devastated, I had become one of those affairs that you shut up with a nice movie contract, a good book deal, a house in the hills or in my case a fancy position at a glamorous magazine. I had become a transaction, a good fuck and perhaps a good writer. I had won the spot of some hard working jr. editor somewhere, by sleeping with Miranda, the iconic fashion editor talked about all over the world. I had for a brief second had the job that a million girls would kill for and the woman who they adored? I would kill for her too.


	5. Donovan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or when the moon was overhead,
> 
> Came two young lovers lately wed:
> 
> "I am half sick of shadows," said
> 
> The Lady of Shalott.

I met Donovan through a friend at Conde Nast. The days there were vastly different, the writers were handed assignments, some were freelance, other only a few were staff writers. We also had submissions, thousands of them, from all over the country. Submission that unless they came with a recommendation or a recognizable name, were thrown out with the dirty napkins. The first few days my heart ached for them, those poor, dreaming writers, but then I grew tired of sorting through them. They should know better. No one just gets something published in one of the leading publications in the nation. Unless of course you have an affair with one of the editors. I could not bring myself to forget that, self -flagellation, pity and vodka had become my best friends. Lidia had become more of a forced acquaintance, someone you make a bond with to survive. I only accepted her party invitations because I wanted to befriend people at the office, and she always had good booze.  
I was after all still a struggling college student, finishing my masters between editorial meetings and blackouts in my rent-controlled apartment. 

Donovan was a quiet, aerospace engineer. He didn’t really fit in the crowd and I have no idea how he came to be invited but Lidia was eccentric, her parents were something in publishing and she like I only had the job because of who she knew.  
We talked at that party because we both barely knew anyone. I was hanging out by the drinks pretending to nurse a gin and tonic but, in reality, it had only tonic. I was having a rare responsible day where I acted like an adult and didn’t want to drink and drive.  
“Hi,” he said approaching me with a bottle of some vodka and lime soda.  
“Drink?”  
“I already have one,” I say trying to cut off the conversation and walk away. He was attractive enough but I didn’t find him charming. I rounded the wooden makeshift bar table and smiled.  
“I have watched you across the room and you’ve been holding that drink for over an hour.  
“Sounds a little creepy,” I reply setting the glass down.  
“That you’re not drinking?” he laughs ignoring my comment.  
“That you’re just watching me in a room full of people for an hour,” I snap back. I don’t want to talk to him, I don’t want to get hit on. All I can think of is Miranda. Miranda and Stephan and it makes me angry all over again.  
“I’m Donovan,” he offers.  
“Andrea,” I reply.  
“Andrea, I’m leaving but can I have your number?”  
I shrug but spit out the digits. He laughs throws his drink back and walks away.  
I don’t think about him after the party is over. It turns out I do drink that night. I drink in such fast succession that I end up throwing up in the perfectly manicured lawn of her cull- de sac. I then proceed to be guided back and left to sleep in whatever forsaken couch she happened to own and find.  
Donovan does call me about a week later and asks me out for dinner. We go to Cheesecake Factory, and I’m glad that it isn’t some high- end restaurant where I’ll be forced to remember Miranda.  
I order a Martini, or a Cosmopolitan something along those lines, something trivial. He ordered a beer and told me about how he liked to brew beer in his house. I wore white cashmere pants, it reminded me of her, of Miranda. It turns out I can’t escape her. The date was animated enough, but I was glad when two hours later I came home and fell asleep. He called me the next day, and the day after that and he texted me too. Somewhere in the middle of the next three months he went and came back from the Middle East and Rome and brought me back whatever I asked.  
His light brown eyes would lightly sparkle when he laughed and he was always very shy to grab my hand.  
“I bet he’s the guy mom wants you to bring home,” Lisa said to me one day.  
I shrugged, “he's nice.”  
“Doesn’t sound like he brings you home?” She laughed sarcastically.  
“We haven’t had sex yet.”  
“Three months and nada?” She raises a well -groomed eyebrow in disbelief.  
I shrug again, sitting nearby at a bar table after work. Lisa was a museum curator, she worked at the MET and she also curated for private collections of high ranking officials. Drinks were definitely on her.  
“Fuck him first then let me know if you want to keep him around,” she says bluntly and suddenly I’m caught off guard as I see Miranda standing next to me by the bar. Lisa looks flushed perhaps from seeing the Dragon Lady leaning against the dark green stool of the Park Plaza Hotel bar or perhaps from the third whiskey neat she’s had.  
“Miranda, how have you been?” I say like it is the most natural thing in the world and she nods.  
“I’ve been good Andrea, aren’t you going to introduce me?”  
I nod more enthusiastically than I should have, and my left foot starts to tap the bottom of the stool out of nervousness.  
“This is Lisa, my cousin. Lisa this is Miranda, the editor-in-chief of Runway.”  
“Let me buy you ladies a drink,” she says and signals to the bartender at the same time that she pulls the stool and sits down next to me.  
Her hand stills my thigh. It is not in a sex drenched way, she presses down like mothers do to quiet their children.  
Lisa shakes her head, “I think I’ve had enough. I have to go home. Miranda it’s a pleasure to finally meet you,”she states politely extending out her hand.  
Miranda takes it, “Finally?”  
“Everyone in this city is always waiting to meet you,” she winks and leans in to kiss me goodbye. That was a perfect save from Lisa, I didn’t expect anything less from the curator at the MET and apparently neither did Miranda.  
“She’s good at being ambivalent, almost as good as me,” she smirks and for all my talk of forgetting her all I want to do is kiss her.  
“Andrea, I want to apologize.”  
I shake my head, “you have nothing to apologize for, we both knew what it was.”  
“What, was what?” she asks coyly.  
“An affair Miranda, that is what I was to you,” I say rapidly drinking the fresh new glass that has been positioned in front of me. I look at her and raise my head to not cry. I wish she would leave. Her perfume reached me slightly, Givenchy, I would recognize it everywhere. Givenchy black diamond. It was not as expensive as you’d think but Givenchy was a classic, a timeless beauty and it served her well.  
“Do you like him?” She asks softly, it’s almost a whisper.  
She isn’t looking at me, she pretends to write something down but it’s so slow and deliberate I can tell she’s waiting for me to speak. Of course, she knew, she always knew.  
“He’s a nice guy,” I say playing with my hands.  
“That’s not what I asked,” she says still not looking at me.  
“Yes, I do,” I say hoping it will make her go away.  
Instead she nods, “Good. Now can we start over can we be friends? Let me take you out to dinner? Tomorrow?”  
I nod because I want to have dinner with her.  
“I’ll send Roy, goodnight Andrea,” she whispers and leans in to kiss me softly on the cheek.  
Givenchy lingers longer than she does.  
The bartender who by now has become an acquaintance comes over to collect Miranda’s half glass of wine and the $100 she has tucked under it.  
“What was that?” he asks curiously, “you never said you knew the great fashion goddess?”  
I shrugs, “I used to.”  
“From the looks of it, you still do,” he says.  
“I used to work for her,” I whisper looking at the array of glass bottles displayed artistically.  
I know I’ve consumed enough, what was it now? Four? Five? I didn’t really care, I wanted to drown my thoughts.  
“At Runway? What do you do?” he questions again. “In all the years I have worked here, I have only seen her stop at this bar twice. Today with you and years ago with de la Renta, you must be important?”  
I laugh, “I was a lowly assistant, she only stopped to wish me well.”  
“And to invite you do dinner? Must have been a heck of an assistant.”  
I laugh again. Oh, I definitely went above and beyond the call of duty. The thoughts that accompany that statement make me lust for her, I think of Miranda’s svelte figure, her soft curves and her hip bone that protrudes from her waist. I think of the delicate lines that draw from her legs to her core and the contrast of my hands on her. I think of silk nightgowns sliding of her frame and I think of black lace being traced by my expert hands. I think of the soft plush of her pink lips and the cold cobalt of her eyes when they are filled with passion.  
“Another drink?” he repeats and my eyes focus back on him. He’s dark skinned and his sleek black hair settles into a part in the middle of his head. He has strong round eyes that match the color of his hair. He isn’t fat or skinny, and when he smiles you can see that he has braces.  
I nod.  
“What do you do now?” he asks again. I’m the only patron at the bar. No one really comes here unless they are staying at the hotel or they work nearby and they don’t mind paying $19 dollars for a vodka martini.  
“I’m a writer, I write for Conde Nast,” I say and what once I thought I would proclaim proudly I hide. There is no need to tell him I’m the assistant editor.  
He smiles and adds, “that’s awesome!”  
That was exactly what my parents said when I told them of the promotion. They yelled ‘that’s awesome into the phone and moved on with their conversation about my sister and my niece. The people over at the magazine had been a little more zealous about welcoming me and though the vibes were just as elitist and snob as Runway their human quality was better.  
Arlene the Editor in Chief had left a basket of flowers and a welcome card. She was out of town the week I started which happened to be a week after I had talked to Miranda.  
The other staff writers and the copy editors came by to say hello through the day or week. It turns out Arlene is the quicentenial socialite who went to Harvard, married their sweetheart and has a picture-perfect family, full of beautiful posed pictures and absent husbands.  
She was extremely nice albeit demanding and I enjoyed her company at work. She was 59, but looked radiant with gold long hair, small brown eyes and Botox arranged features. She always walked in flats unless she was going out and her office was full of ocean view photographs.

“Where do you want to go Andrea,” she would ask me. I liked people calling me by my given name now, one of the many things Miranda had changed about me. I had grown up with her, maybe she had been a rite of passage.  
“Here,” I say and though it hasn’t been my dream I like the job. It is passive and full of beauty and after working two months there I realize I can pay off all my student loans with half a year of work and still have enough to get out of that apartment.  
“Is that so?” she smiles, “or is this just a good paying job for you?”  
I answer because there is no malice in her voice, she feels like a mentor. There are four assistant editors each in the main four categories for the magazine and from there each has a managing editor and they all report to Arlene. I can only imagine what she makes and yet she earns it just like Miranda does.  
“Honesty, I didn’t ever think I’d work in a lifestyle magazine, I wanted to report great happening stories and change the world.”  
“Not the best resorts in Bali?” she jokes.  
I shake my head. We’re overseeing the sunset from her office, drinking lemon grass tea after a staff meeting. She said she likes to get to know her editors, “one of you will one day be me,” she often proclaims thought the building.  
“That said, destiny has brought me here and I am liking it. And yes, it is a good living.”  
“Destiny or Miranda?” she asks bluntly and I feel the spotlight. I blink and take another sip, “both,” I say and she seems satisfied with the answer.

I don’t remember getting home from the bar that night, all I remember was waking up and realizing that I had dinner with Miranda. All I thought about the remaining of the day was Miranda and dinner. I thought about it at work, and on the ride back and while I was getting ready. I even wondered if I had fabricated the invitation, I doubt myself until Roy pulls up and opens the door.  
“Andy,” he nods. I cringe when he addresses me by that name but I don’t correct him.  
“Roy, long time,” I say and he nods.  
“You look good, Miranda is waiting, so let’s not make her wait,” he teases and I laugh.  
I’m nervous, like a first date. My hands tremble when I sit down at the restaurant and she notices the tremor in my voice.

“It’s just dinner Andrea, steak and wine,” she comments and I nod.  
“I know,” I say. The truth is I didn’t know better, to me friends and lovers was the same thing. I wanted to be in her presence all the time like a moth is drawn to the fire, like a cat to a trap, like deer run to the light.  
“You look gorgeous tonight,” I offer because I can’t think of anything else to say.  
“Thank you,” she whispers.  
“Well you look beautiful all the time,” she offers to which I smiled. She still had the same smile that she had when we met, the same predatory and demure smile that captured me.  
“That is a lie, but I will take it,” I answer.  
We talk about so many things that night, about school, every subject every teacher in detail. We talk about work, about this event and that new Yves St. Laurent and that time I dropped the scarfs. We talk about options, about bad decisions. We talk about families, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers. We talk about children about the possibility of having them, about the twins and why she didn’t have more, about all the time they consume, about the joy they bring. We talk about pets, cats, dogs, childhood pets and fantasy pets. We talk about wine and beer and favorite vacations. We talk about everything, until the last patrons leave and we realize it would be impolite to stay any longer.

“I’ve never stayed until the restaurant closes,” I say as we wait for Roy. It was strange. She never apologized, we never talked about that day or Conde Nast, or how much I miss her.  
“I have never done so either, and most importantly I wish you didn’t have to go,” she confesses and does so in a light matter, like true friends do to each other. I liked tonight, there was no pressure, no guilt, no expectations. Maybe this could work, maybe we could be friends after all.  
“Thank you,” I say.  
“For what?”  
“For just dinner, Miranda, for steak and wine.”  
She smiles, “you didn’t even get steak.”  
“We must fix that then, there must be a next time,” I say hoping she will agree.  
“Next Friday?” she suggests as she’s handed the keys to a beautiful black Maserati, “Roy will take you home, I had them bring over a car. I felt like driving today.”  
“In the city?” I ask flabbergasted.  
She laughs, “you’ve changed me,” she throws out dramatically and I laugh with her as she drives away and Roy pulls up.  
Yes, this could work. Friendship was much better than feeling angst. Friendship was freer, we could go everywhere, be friends, I could meet the twins officially, I could go to her parties. A few months ago, I was so angry at her, so heartbroken that I could not imagine talking to her without wanting to kiss her and hit her at the same time. Tonight, I had enjoyed getting to know the friend I never had before. It turns out there was so much I didn’t know about her. It turns out there was more than stolen weekends and lustful moans.  
Destiny and Miranda, maybe they were the same thing after all.

Maybe I could even have it all. Donovan keeps calling, we go out again. He’s like a lost puppy that trails behind me, he eyes are downcast and he leans to listen to every word I say. I like him, he feels reliable and unfaltering. With him I don’t have to guess if he likes me, if he wants a relationship, with him it is simple and stable. He is the very opposite of Miranda, he doesn’t demand, he doesn’t expect, he looks at me like a goddess. He looks at me like I look at Miranda, he idolizes me and I like to be the center of attention for a change. However, when I do go out to dinner with Miranda the following weekend to the same restaurant, the same corner table, the same bottle of wine I am vastly aware that I don’t love him. He doesn’t make my heart flutter, when he talks I often tune him out, I am not rushing to have him on my bed, and no I don’t think about him like I think about her.

I stand there staring at my reflection in navy blue dress and silver hoop earrings, I can’t help but wonder where this is going. Like playing with fire, again.  
She’s stunning in a white ironed cashmere suit drapes over her figure accompanied by a black pendant and flashy red lips. I can’t believe I used to think fashion was nonconsequential I think to myself as I try not to look too obsessed with the way she looks. Her silver hair is combed to one side and she smiles as I reach the table.

“Andrea, I ordered us a bottle of wine, I hope you don’t mind?”  
I shake my head, smoothing my dress, “Not at all”  
“How was your week?”  
“It went well, taking some exams and enjoying work.”  
“Ah, I’m sure Arlene is a better boss than me? She likes to get to know everyone, and she likes to form loyalty. I manage fashion, loyalty is a given…” she pauses, “except with you. You were the exception, you are still the exception.”  
“You have my loyalty Miranda, you always have,” I say seriously. She pours the wine, the smell of jam and alcohol, embodies us for a moment. She’s a fan of Bordeaux, expensive Bordeaux the kind that comes with a grand cru certification and ratings from the curated sommelier.  
“I hope so,” she whispers in her usual voice and again we ease into conversations like it was meant to be. Two long lost friends catching up.  
We mostly talk about travel and fashion this time. The wine slowly disappears leaving only tears staining the glasses and a rosy color on her cheeks.  
“Does he make you laugh at dinner diner too?” I ask. I am referring to husband number three. I regret the words that come out as soon as they leave my lips and I blame the wine.  
She stops cutting the steak in front of her and raises her eyes at me, under a curtain of lashes I can see her reluctance to speak and her confusion.  
Her lower lip twitches and I think she’s going to answer impolitely but she says, “No, he’s not as charming as you, but you already know that,” she baits.

I want to ask more, to ask if that’s why we are here. I want to ask her what made her seek me out and apologize. I want to know if she truly meant it, if she was sorry she hurt me or if she was just lonely again. I want to know if she really thinks we can be friends but I don’t push it’s too early for that. The wounds are still to raw at least for me and I don’t want to lose this delicate balance we have achieved.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she says  
“The truth is I’d rather not talk about him, but you should know that even if he were funny and charismatic, I’d still be here with you. I really like … our friendship,” she paused to choose her words carefully. The skilled editor of an empire, she sure knew how to choose her words.  
We walk out together again, like the week before only this time no keys are handed to her and we slide into the chauffeured car, “the girls are home watching a movie would you like to join us?”  
I shake my head because part of me is afraid. I don’t want to be part of their family, I still don’t belong there. How long until she tires of me again? How long until Stephan comes back and he gets to sit with them watching Ella Enchanted or Cinderella? How long until I’m crying again.  
“I’d love to but I have a few deadlines tomorrow morning, maybe next week?” I say and again I regret the words. What if she doesn’t want dinner next week.  
She nods and leans in to give me a chaste kiss on the cheek, “I understand, from one career obsessed woman to another, I understand. Next week, we’ll try again, I’ll have Emily repeat the reservations. Goodnight Andrea. Roy will drive you home.”  
Her answers are sometimes so concise, so directive that all you can do is nod and smile.  
I watch her walk up the stairs to the townhouse and disappear. 

“You look so deep in thought, I could have sworn you didn’t listen to a word I said,” Donovan voices as we skype that night. I’m still wearing the blue dress and I’m still thinking about her invitation.  
“I didn’t, I’m sorry I was preoccupied with school,” I lie.  
He’s sitting on the edge of his hotel bed, some leftover food in the background and a Harry Potter t-shirt. I stare at his attire, it’s so unfashionable. Miranda would never wear something like that. Perhaps I have become the same snob I used to make fun of, perhaps I think I’m better because I know Miranda, and I have worn an exclusive Balenciaga dress. Perhaps I am a horrible human being now but I can’t imagine myself dating someone who wears Harry Potter anything. Immediately I think of Nate, of his wrinkly shirts and the way he always smelled of grease and tomato paste.  
“Fair enough I’ll let you go, then,” Donovan sais and I am so far into my own thoughts that his words startle me.  
“Boy you really must be failing a class or something,” he jokes.  
“Oh, no … no sorry I was … I’m tired I’ll call you later?”  
“Are you free tomorrow?” he asks. He gets back from Dubai, he works for the Air Force.  
“No, I’m… I’m working all day,” I lie and it feels so good to hang up the phone.  
I don’t say ‘I love you’, or ‘I miss you’ or anything of that sort and I wonder what satisfaction he could possibly be getting out of this. I haven’t slept with him, even though he’s hinted at it a few times. He asked me to join him in D.C. in his hotel room even, I flatly said no. I could not bring myself to sleep with him. It’s not that he was unattractive, he had a good career to start a future and when he spoke of the future he seemed to hint at something long term.  
I liked him, he was nice and always bended to what I wanted to do, but I don’t lust for him and at my age I wanted an epic romance that would burn.  
I should have let him go, because it was only fair to him. I should have told him I didn’t see us lasting. I didn’t. I kept him around because it was nice to have a relationship I didn’t have to hide. I kept him around because he made me feel normal and I lied to myself about us.


	6. Stephan

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I never understood
> 
> The meaning of irony
> 
> Or how cruel it can be,
> 
> Until you told me,
> 
> That though you may love me,
> 
> You find it difficult to
> 
> Hear the words
> 
> “I love you” from me.

The third time she sent Roy again. When I got to the restaurant she was there again with a bottle of wine, and a Ralph Lauren ensemble.   
“I’ve never seen you wear Ralph Lauren,” I said.  
She smiled, the beautiful smile I loved to see and shrugged, “I have never seen you know a brand just by looking at it.”  
“You don’t know me well then, Runway changed me.”   
“Just Runway?” she asks. She likes to do that, ask, prove, test what I will say. I choose not to indulge her, “Just Runway.”  
She nods and smiles again, which tells me that she has understood it was a joke.   
She pours the wine, this time it’s Champagne.   
“Champagne?” I ask curiously, “what are we celebrating?”   
“We don’t need a reason to drink champagne, An-dre-a. You should know that by now, but if you need one I will give you two,” she remarks enunciating her words like she always does.  
“Today is my work anniversary at Runway, don’t you dare ask how many years,” she pauses her eyes wander over to mine. For a single silent moment we share an invisible smile, “two, our friendship.”  
I take the poured glass and raise it, “to work anniversaries and friendship.”

Dinners with Miranda become a strange compromise, a limbo between comfortable friendship and restrained memories. I know that I love her, but somewhere between the tenth dinner and glasses of wine it stops to hurt. My heart no longer aches when I sit down next to her, to the smell of Givenchy and nude Chanel lipstick. My breathing no longer stops when she leans in and gives me a chaste kiss on the cheek as we say goodbye for the week.  
She becomes a best friend, I get to know a different side of Miranda that I had never imagined. I get to keep inside jokes with her, I get to learn about the twins about her dreams for both young girls. I get to know about the strained relationship she had with her mother and father.   
She becomes a background mentor, she tells me about her years in college, how vastly different it was, her corporate years, how she had to fight tooth and nail to get to where she is.  
We talk about Jaqueline, and the possibility of retirement.   
It turns out Miranda has a lot to say on every subject. She gives me her political opinions, and her gossip stories of the Clintons, and the Obamas and the Reagans. She can talk for hours, but she is even a better listener.   
I learn as we order oysters to go with our champagne or bruschetta to go with the Bordeaux that she loves to sit quietly, eyes sparkling in the dim lights of the restaurant and just listen. She likes inserting nods, and uh-hu’s here and there. I learn that I love to tell her about my life, about my family, my college friends, about my aspirations, my quirky stories and my work complains.   
I enjoy watching her listen to me, her face relaxes, her eyes soften, focusing solely on what I’m saying. She puts her right hand around the glass of wine and though she doesn’t notice she gently taps it with her index finger as I talk. She often leans in effortlessly to hear what I’m saying better and rests her chin on her left hand. If I was a painter, I’d love to pain her like this.  
The white of her wrap-blouse contrasting with the mauve colors of the leather booths and the blood red of the wine in the glass. When she does speak it’s usually to give a short opinion or to ask a question that will probe another story.   
She doesn’t’ invite me in to the house again for a while and I think that maybe she never will. At first, I think that it will sting, but it doesn’t. I have in the course of those months learned to simply be her friend, her confident. She tells me about the twins, about her greatest dreams and biggest fears for the young girls.   
“I want them to grow up away from the fashion world, I hope that they decide to do something that will truly change the world.”  
“Miranda, fashion changed the world. You of all people know that,” I say and I don’t know why I’m giving her advice on fashion. I completely understand what she wants for her daughters. She wants them to find fulfillment in something that is not so fake, and controversial. “My biggest fear is that one day they will reproach me for being away so much, that they will blame me for making fashion all about body types, and skin colors.”  
“I understand,” I say, “like actors want their children to grow away from the darkness of Hollywood.”  
She nods.  
She invites me in that night, “the girls are free again,” there is a pause, much like the one Roy gave me when he told me that Miranda worried. “They’ve been asking about you. I think they officially want to meet you. You don’t have any deadlines, do you?”  
I shake my head, “no I’m all yours.”   
I think that I’m going to regret the words but I don’t. They no longer feel awkward when I say them to her. Instead of getting off on the street Roy parks and we walk together. She opens the door and holds it for me to go inside.  
“Caroline, Cassidy I’m home,” she yells as if she was Fred Flintstone. It was so uncharacteristic. The again I had never seen the interaction with her daughters apart from work. They run into the living room, two well poised almost teenagers with red hair and a myriad of freckles. They smile at me and come to give me a shy hug.   
“Hello Andrea,” they say in unity and their timbre matches Miranda’s when she used to call me from her office.  
“Andrea came to have dessert with us, what did you girls get?”  
Cara comes into the living room with a decadent chocolate cake and a few plates, “I thought you’d like to enjoy it in the living room,” she offers and her eyes dart over to me more than a few times. She knows me, she remembers the days I used to spend with Miranda, the dinners. I can’t help but wonder what she thinks of me?   
“That is a wonderful idea Cara, will you help Ms. Sachs put her coat away?”  
The girls are complete opposites, Caroline is an extrovert that won’t stop talking. She critiques the outfits of five girls at school and continues on to give her opinions on some of the outfits at the new movie premiere. Miranda simply looks over to me and smiles. Cassidy is shy she only inserts a few opinions and notes here and there and I can see the resemblance to Miranda. I can see that shyness will turn into strength of character, into low controlled voice and a sense of being. She leans in at various times during the conversation and rests her chin on her hand and it is like seeing young Miranda and knowing who she will grow up like.   
When they finally leave for bed with goodbyes, and extracted promises of me to return the following week I turn over to her and say, “did you ever want more kids? I feel like you are a fantastic mom.”  
She laughs, a nervous laugh and I don’t think I’ve ever heard that from her. Another new thing I learn about her and archive.   
“Sure, I did. I do. I would love more kids. None of my husbands wanted more kids,” she concludes. Besides I would not want another child of divorced parents.   
“What makes you assume that will be the case? You haven’t divorced Stephan.”  
“I guess I am always afraid those close to me will leave. We both know I’m a hard person to get along with.”  
I want to say she’s not hard to please but I don’t think it will ring the way I want it. The only downside to having friends who were lovers. Instead I get up and say, “It’s getting late Miranda, I should head home.”  
She agrees.  
I take a cab home, opposing such a late-night call to Roy and not wanting her to drive.  
“Call me when you get home,” she urges and I opt for a text.  
“I’m home, thank you for tonight,” I write.  
“Don’t thank me. It was nice. Now that I know you’re not dead I can go to sleep.”  
I read the text five or ten times, maybe more it doesn’t matter. It makes me smile.

The following Friday we go to dinner again and she invites me to her house again. This time the girls are not around. They have taken the train to their grandmother’s home in Jersey where their father lives.   
We lounge in the living room, watching Sex in the City and talking about Sarah’s awful outfits.   
“She’s not really pretty,” Miranda comments, “and not charismatic in real life.”  
“You’ve met her?” I ask only to answer my own question, “Of course you have.”  
“What is that supposed to mean?”  
We both know I meant no harm by it. Miranda has changed into lounge velour pants and she has her feet tucked in underneath her in the edge of the sofa.  
“Do you miss Ohio?” she asks.  
I shake my head, “Not really, sometimes. I miss things about it. I miss the quiet streets, I miss knowing my neighbors. I miss my family. Well mostly my father. He is a good man, with good advice and solid morals. My mother well, she’s complicated.”  
“I understand,” she says and I remember her parents have both passed away.  
“Do you miss them? Your parents?” I ask.  
She gives a deep sigh, and there is a silence to which I regret asking that question. I look at her as she seems to look straight at the streets outside of our window. Finally, she shakes her head.   
“I don’t know. I mean of course I miss them, they were my parents after all. We were so vastly different. We had irreconcilable differences that set us apart for years, I didn’t talk to them. My father had called me a month before their accident and we had lunch. He wanted us to mend the broken relationships but mom was so set in her ways and he followed her in everything. She was a true class separatist, she never accepted that I didn’t want to follow the family business, she couldn't understand how I opted to pay for my own school instead of taking what she was dictating at me. My sister was the perfect one, the one that went to business school, and manages the company to this day. She didn’t understand my choice of friends, ‘how could I hang out with Nancy the maid’s daughter?’ So, the answer is I miss the concept of my parents but life with them no,” she turned to look at me the threat of tears in her eyes and asked, “does that make me a monster?”  
I shook my head and embraced her. I wanted to heal the hurt that I could see surfaced like water bubbling out of an oil mix.   
“Of course not, loving and missing are two different things,” I say softly.   
She rests her had on my shoulder for a long time. We sit quiet thinking about what we just said about our progenitors, that we love them but not see ourselves being part of their worlds. We think about those words as we let the wine fog our mind and close our eyes.  
When I wake up I realize that I’ve fallen asleep on the couch, that there is a blanket over me and that there is someone else who is not Miranda in the room.  
I sit up startled.  
“Good Morning,” that someone says and I realize it’s Stephan with a glass of orange juice and a book.  
“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I sputter. I get up as if the couch was on fire, startled, embarrassed and confused.  
“Don’t worry, you must be Andy?” he asks and there is a genuine warmth to his character. Here in his home, he seems nothing like the man who comes into Runway to whisk Miranda away for dinner because they are going to be late, as always.  
“Yes,” I say and wonder if Miranda talks about me.  
“The girls talk about you, only assistant that has managed to befriend Miranda,” he jokes.  
As I look at him I realize he’s wearing a suit and a mangled tie.  
He looks down at himself, “Just got back from Munich, didn’t want to wake her up. Miranda only ever sleeps in on Saturdays.”  
I nod, I want to answer that I know but that is irrelevant in this context.  
“Do you want some breakfast?” he offers, “I’m starving and I love to cook pancakes. Lord knows Miranda would never eat one.”  
I am surprised by his offer. I want to decline, but I realize I’m starving and this version of him seems generous.   
We walk over to the kitchen after I accept and I sit down on the island stool watching him crack the egg into a wooden bowl, one, two, three.  
He stretches to grab the box of mix and whisks it while telling me about the flight back form Munich.   
“Nightmare, I hate traveling so much. I know that is something people who travel all the time say but it gets annoying.”  
“I can imagine,” I say, as I hear the sizzle of the hot butter receive the batter mix.  
He asks me if I like blueberries or chocolate in my pancakes and I answer that I only like them plain.  
“Plain Jane,” he jokes, “now I understand why you two are friends. The last time I force fed one to Miranda she insisted it had to be plain.”  
I get an odd comfort knowing that she has the same tastes I do.  
“So, what do you do now, instead of Runway? You don’t work there, right?”  
“No, I don’t. I work for Elias Clarke still, different magazine,” I omit that I’m assistant editor to Conde Nast. “I went to school for journalism.”  
“I can see how you were not using it as her assistant.”  
“I learned a lot at Runway,” I say gulping down the Orange juice he had served me.  
“Yes, you would have had to,” he says and I don’t want to ask why.   
“Runway changed my life,” I say perhaps too enthusiastically. His face raises from the concentration on his cakes drenched in syrup and studies me. I wonder if her knows. If he knows I was the affair.  
“How so?” he enquires.  
I wonder if he knows about Miranda’s other liaison.  
“I used to be a frumpy fat girl,” I start and tell him the story about how I changed my style over not being able to bring Miranda home in a hurricane.  
He laughs, “I remember that day. She said you were disappointing because she trusted you more than all the other silly girls.”

I insist on going home before Miranda wakes up and she only texts me to say, “Sorry about leaving you on the couch, you were sleeping so peacefully I didn’t want to wake you. Stephan tells me he took good care of you? See you Friday.”  
I write back a confirmation, that I will see her Friday while I ponder about this new development. It was almost part of a classic novel, when the mistress meets the wife and realizes she isn’t a monster, that she is funny and genuine and loves her husband. Was it like that? Miranda and I were no longer lovers, we were friends. Did it apply then? Did she ever think of us before this friendship? 

“Why did you ask me out to dinner? Why did you want me to be your friend?” I ask the following Friday. She doesn’t look taken back by the question or perhaps it’s her charcoal Chanel jacket paired with a matching skirt and a salmon colored blouse that keeps her together.

“Did meeting Mr. Priestly make you ponder about our friendship? Did it make you wonder why I cheated on him? He seems nice enough, right? Gentle enough, Funny enough?”

I nod. She still hasn’t lost that quality, the one where she can take a look at me and read me like an open book. She smiles and sips the wine. 

“I think you are an amazing human being Andrea…” she pauses. 

I realize that explanation would have been enough for me, because I don’t really care. Of course, it was a different sensation meeting Stephan but at the same time it didn’t hurt, it wasn’t wounding, I wasn’t bleeding. I loved Miranda’s friendship just as it was.

“I didn’t want to lose your friendship, but I knew you needed time to see we were better off as friends. Stephan is all those things you think he is.”

I nod again and I’m beginning to feel like I am losing battle ground in this dinner, and I don’t want this to be a battle at all. We gaze across the table, I’m reminded of an old poem I read a long time ago.  
‘I am reminding that her and I, we are just stories waiting to be told. Stories in a grander plot, a classic novel that has been writing itself for all of our time.’

“On a different note the girls want you to come to our outdoor summer night. We always have a few guests over and we have a good time. It’s casual we’ll all be there next weekend, they really hope you can make it,” she says softly.

“Do you?” I ask

She casts her azure eyes down to look at the brilliant white table cloth and the shadows cast by the wine glasses sitting on the edge. “Do I what?”

“Do you want me to go?” I don’t look away, she raises her gaze and smiles at me.  
“Of course, I do! Stephan and I want you come spend the evening with us.”  
“Great, I’ll be there then. Can I bring someone?”   
She stops for a second, I see the turbulence in her eyes as she rapidly nods, “of course, the more the better.”

I bring Donovan and it turns out ‘a few friends’ meant like fifty people over a pool and an open bar. It turns out casual was a live band playing as everyone walked around in expensive capris, and nigh sun dresses. Miranda wore a white and purple Cavalli dress, it was from a few seasons ago and I wonder if she pulled it last minute from her closet. 

There is ahi tuna over sweet rice being served as hors d'oeuvres and pink champagne cocktails to celebrate the ease of summer. I barely see Miranda all night, save for a few moments where she comes to meet Donovan leans in to whisper that she’s glad I came.   
There is barely anyone I know, except for the twins who linger by us most of the night. They keep bringing different foods for us to try and they keep pointing different personalities that they like or don’t like. Donovan is incredibly talented with children it turns out and he keeps both girls laughing all night. Miranda glances from across the pool every time she hears her daughters giggle loudly. Towards the end of the night Nigel shows up and comes over shaking his head.  
“Six, six, six, I would have never guessed…” he smiles.  
“Nigel hello to you too, this is Donovan, Donovan Nigel we used to work together.”  
Nigel pauses no doubt noting that I did not introduce Donovan as anything of mine.  
“A pleasure to meet you, and you miss assistant editor it’s good to see you too.”  
I gulp and hope that Nigel in all his well dresses splendor does not say a word about his assumption of Miranda and I, he doesn’t. Instead he tells me that I look splendorous  
and that he’s glad Conde Nast has not taken my good taste away. The chat is entertaining, he keeps us talking for quite a while and the cocktails keep coming. When we finally look at the time, it is well past midnight and Donovan hints that he must go for he has a long drive the following morning to his parent’s home in Boston.   
I had consumed more alcohol that he had. Nigel offers to drive me home so that Donovan can leave earlier. With a certain degree of distrust Donovan agrees. I have a feeling he feels just like I used to feel in Miranda’s world. He feels as if he’s peeking in to someone else life. I see him part, his tall muscular build, his light brown hair, his firm step. I feel nothing for him and yet it is comforting to know he’s there.  
“You don’t have to lie and tell me you love him, I can see right through you, six.”  
“It’s too soon to love him,” I answer with indignation. I should not have stayed back with Nigel I knew he would want to talk.  
There are few guests by now and Miranda keeps looking back at us.  
“See the way she keeps looking back at us, my guess is she wants to make sure you are safe.”  
I laugh.   
“I once told you to be careful of her, I think I miscalculated how much she had to be careful of you.”  
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I murmur again and detect for the first time a slight slur in my speech. I’m not sure if the fact that I can see it says that I’m sober now or that I’m inebriated.  
“Andy, tell me about your friendship,” he says.  
I smile and I tell him. I tell him because there is no one else to tell and I’ve been drowning inside. I tell him about Miranda, about dinner and steak. I tell him how effortless our first dinner was, how it was like talking to an old friend. I tell him about how perfect her smile is from across the table, about how she ordered the wine I love. Over more champagne cocktails and leftover crackers I tell him about our second dinner, how flawless we had just conversed, how I had a million questions about her husband, about if she loved him, but I didn’t dare asked. I told him how good all this felt.   
He hardly interrupted me, let me talk about my flailing moral judgement, I could not fall in love. Then I questioned if I was falling in love again, then came to realize I wasn’t, but I could fall in love. He seemed satisfied. It was quite a revelation


	7. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the two of them loved each other for a long time in silence without making love again

A few things happened that night as the stars spilled out onto the New York sky like a canvas. A few single things transpired on Miranda’s blue lit LED illuminated get together that would leave me wondering for weeks to come. That night as I watched Donovan walk away and Nigel drop hints that love did not ensue from me, I realized I could see myself with Donovan. His presence in my life though not passionate and lustful had given me peace and fortitude that was lacking with Miranda. I could see myself walking down an isle with him, with our families in background photos. I could see him as the father of my children, strong and steady. I could see us growing old together in a passive compromise of care and love that will grow with time. He reminded me of my father and that was a good thing.   
As I thought about that and Nigel continued talking about the new man he was dating Stephan finally came over to his wife and in the distance, we saw him try to tell her something. Miranda shook her head. He tried again offering her a glass of water, again she shook her head. For a moment we stood silent, even though we knew they were too far to hear the conversation. He tried to grab her by the forearm, this time she looked up at him, snatched her arm away and yelled out words we could not make out but by the few onlookers nearby, were stern. I immediately made a move to get up from the table, Nigel grabbed my hand and pulled me down.   
“She’s not your concern,” he said softly.  
“He’s forcing her!” I say firmly but I’m not really sure what he’s forcing her to.   
“To what?” Nigel voices my thoughts. “Miranda has had too much to drink. Let it go.”  
I take a deep breath and see the couple still talking. Miranda smooths her hands on her dress and the man she chose to stand by her shakes his head in a defeated move and mouths something as she turns and walks away.  
She’s not swaying, but her walk is slower and her gaze is down as if she’s measuring her steps. Stephan is handed a set of keys by someone with a black uniform and he storms out passing by our table to collect his coat.   
“Can you watch her? Andy? Nigel?” he commends us and we nod together.  
Minutes later, agonizing minutes later Miranda wanders over to our table and sits down.  
“Andrea, you’re still here?” she asks and though her words don’t slur, they are passive and slow pending on her tongue before they slide out. She’s not looking directly at me but somewhere past me.   
I nod, “Yes, I was waiting to say goodbye.”  
“I’ll walk you upstairs Miranda,” Nigel offers.   
She shakes her head in the same way she did with Stephan and she murmurs, “Andrea can do it right? Can you walk me upstairs?”  
I look over at Nigel, he wears a blank face. I keep quiet.  
“That’s what best friends are for right?” she says.  
I walk her upstairs and she grasps my hand as we walk each step and she keeps silent. I can hear her breathing get shallower and faster. She takes a deep breath here and there to try and steady herself. I tell myself that it’s because she’s drank too much but I know we haven’t been alone in her room in a long time.  
When we reach her bed, she pats it for me to sit down. I do.  
“What’s your favorite childhood story Andrea?” she asks and it is completely unexpected. It is unexpected and yet I am not surprised. “Miranda is famous for being unpredictable,” Doug once told me and he had been right. She had been unpredictable from the moment she hired me, to the moment she handed me a glass of wine in Paris. She had always taken me by surprise from her delicate gifts to her rambunctious personality in private, to the way she decided to walk away. And now here we were friends after months, sitting alone in her bed. She’s asking me about my childhood story.  
“Snow White,” I say, “but I like the evil queen. She’s cunning and smart and goal oriented. She set out to do what she wanted and part of it was to be beautiful. I think Snow was overrated.”  
She laughs slightly.   
“The Evil Queen? Are you secretly evil Andrea?” she asks with clear intentions to joke.  
“No, but I think she’s smart as hell, and you Miranda what is your favorite story?”  
“Peter Pan,” she whispers.  
“Peter Pan?” I ask, “Is it because they never grow up?”   
She shakes her head and leans into my shoulder. Her soft, silky hair brushed on my collar and the leftover smell of her perfume is going to linger on my mind for a long time.  
“Is it because it’s set in London?” I prove again desperate to keep the conversation going and pat down the desire to wrap my arms around her.  
She nods, “the starry blue sky, the flying over London, the thought of never growing up, it was so beautiful in a sense.”  
“wow you’re so romantic,” I joke and push her gently.  
“Only when I’m with you,” she answers back and it somehow does not feel like a joke.  
I don’t want to hear that, I don’t want her to tell me anything that will cross the bridge of this fragile friendship we’ve built. I don’t want her to because tomorrow when she sobers up, she’s going to forget she said it or worse she’s going to remember and not talk to me. I want this beautiful friendship with this beautiful woman to last for years to come. I want to see Cassidy and Caroline grow up and be invited to their college graduation, I want them to come to my wedding, I want to go to theirs. I want to see Miranda be happy, genuinely happy and I want to be at peace. I want this peace that I’ve forged in the past few months. I have understood why people say that sometimes love isn’t everything.  
She doesn’t say anything else for a few minutes, the low light coming from the window is not enough to light the room and shadows lurk around us.  
“Thank you, Andrea for coming and staying. I’m okay if you want to catch Nigel, so he can drive you home,” she says in an abrupt change of words and I can almost guess the alcohol is winding down in her system. I nod and give her one of the usual chaste kisses on her soft cheeks.  
I can feel her muscles smile as I do and I don’t need light to know she looks radiant.  
I walk down the stairs to find Nigel sitting at the last step nursing some coffee.  
“I was starting to plan out ways to walk in there and save you from the claws of the Dragon. It appears once again you’ve escaped unscathed.”  
“Not right now Nigel,” I say, “still taking me home?”  
“What man would say no to you?” he says putting out his hand and grabbing his leather jacket.  
“You, you would.”  
He nods, “probably right.”  
It is no longer night, the alba grey of the day that is dawning somewhere not far from here colors the sky. New York still sleeps, it’s peaceful with all its glorious reputation for always being awake it is not.  
“How were her other husbands?” I ask and I know I’m giving myself away, but who else could answer that question?  
“Don’t do this Andrea,” he cautions.  
“Moth to the light remember?” I say.  
“What happened?”  
“You were there, that happened?” I say referring to that pivotal moment in the office.  
“What happened to Midwest Andy, moralistic compass Andy who wanted to change the world reporting one trash collectors strike at a time?”  
I roll my eyes and look away at the tall rises of this old city.   
“She fell in love.”  
It is the first time I’ve said it publically and shamelessly, and the second revelation of the night happens just like that.   
Nigel’s words don’t disappear into the night, they sit and ruminate in my mind. They simmer and marinade like vegetables in a famous chef’s kitchen.  
Would I have been the same if I had never met her? Would Nate and I have broken up? Was it Runway or Miranda that changed me? Or were my convictions not as firm as I thought they were?  
“You’re so pensive today?” Arlene notes sliding a chair next to mine in the magazines conference room.  
“Long night, sorry,” I say.  
“Miranda’s annual get-together?” she asks and I wonder how much she knows of our relationship. What did Miranda tell her to get me here?  
I nod.  
“You were silent at the meeting, too much to drink?”   
I nod again and look up to see her smiling.  
“I’ve been there too, she’s a great host. Mean cocktails,” she muses sliding a cup of coffee over to me much in the same manner she slid her chair.  
“You and her, seem to be good friends, hard to find,” she smiles.  
“What do you mean?” I look up at her, she’s got on black Capri pants and a French naval inspired shirt with wedges.  
“She’s not easy to get along with. She’s cordial, and poised and knows how to throw parties but personally she’s not very ….”  
I wait for her to say what I know she’s going to say, “Friendly.”  
“Miranda is just reserved and strict with everyone including herself, she demands excellence,” I say defensively.  
Arlene laughs, “I never said she wasn’t excellent. I have an assignment for you Andrea. I think it will benefit you … in every aspect of your life.”   
“I am always up for anything, you know that,” I say.  
“In a few months George is leaving, and the travel editor position will open. The position is still based here in New York but it does require months of travel to England, it may do you good to get away.”  
“Oh,” I breathe in.  
“You don’t have to decide now, go home have some wine tonight. Think it over.”  
It feels just like Miranda asking me to betray Emily all over again. It feels like an ultimatum again.   
“You don’t have to answer tomorrow, you have a few months still and if you don’t want to, nothing will change. But I think it’s a good opportunity for you grow in your career and personally.”  
“I will think about it, thank you Arlene.”

Miranda doesn’t call me that day or that whole week, the words that Nigel uttered to me on that ride home linger along with Arlene’s and Miranda’s love of Peter Pan.  
On Thursday, she asked if we could do our weekly Friday dinner on Saturday because the girls had camp and she wanted to drop them off.  
I comply and when we finally see each other again on Saturday she sits across the table of a different restaurant for the first time in months. From our table we can see the elegant wooden doors. Each table has a miniature lamp set in the middle and the décor screams mid 1950’s.  
She smiles and looks across the table to me, the yellow light from the lamp warms up her face, she looks like a magazine spread. 

“Leave him” she says suddenly ending the silence between us. I look over at her and she’s completely serious, the lights of the nigh reflect in her eyes as they always do and she puts her hand over mine.  
“I don’t want to have to share you with someone else, not you too,” she explains as I look away back to the mesmerizing décor and lobby doors. There is soft music playing out of sync with my thoughts.  
“Do you want to stay and eat?” I say and it is an odd question for friends who just sat down to eat dinner.  
She shakes her head, “I’m tired.”  
She pays for cocktails and looks at me again as we wait for the card to come back.  
“Andrea,” she starts but is interrupted by the bartender bringing the card to sing.  
“I know, I know,” I answer back and sigh, “I will.”

And I do.  
I leave him 

He calls, calls for a week straight and I always let it go to voicemail. I do it because I hate confrontations, and I’m not brave enough to explain why I’m leaving. I do it because it’s not really leaving, I don’t think it is. We were not a couple, not by societal standards, we hadn’t updated our Facebook status and we hadn’t met our parents. I kept telling myself that we were nothing and I owed no explanations.   
I answer a question on messenger because I’m bored and deep inside I want to keep him. I say I “have be been busy with school,” whether he believes it or not he answers that he understands.   
The conversation strays and becomes one line answers over a three- day period.  
I ask about his last trip to the Rome and he says he brought me wine, Chianti just like the one I like. I don’t say thanks because I don’t plan on seeing him. I ask about his work and his beer brewing hobby. He asks when he can come to see me. I finally agree to lunch, I figure that maybe over sandwiches and wine I can tell him that I don’t wish to see him anymore. Maybe I’ll be brave enough to tell him a half truth, that there is someone else. I agreed to lunch to end whatever we had and he agreed to lunch to make it clear that he liked me.   
I cancelled the day we were supposed to meet, I could not do it. I could not stare into his eyes and have him watch me as I said that I could not continue seeing him. It wasn’t that I loved him and it hurt, it wasn’t that he would get mad, it was the fact that I had been lying all this time. It was the fact that all along there had been someone else and why did it matter now. It was the fact that this other someone could not offer me a future. I sent him an ill written message about having to work and that he was free to see other people if we wanted.  
I didn’t see him after that. He didn’t call and I didn’t mind. I simply blocked him from my social media accounts and pretended that it was the best decision I had made.


	8. Fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
> 
> Whatever I see I swallow immediately
> 
> Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
> 
> I am not cruel, only truthful --

I didn’t do a single thing with the revelations brought forth that week. We kept going like nothing had happened, like she hadn’t fought with Stephan and I hadn’t walked her up the stairs. I act like I hadn’t felt her breath hitch and her head hadn’t rested on my shoulder. We acted like she hadn’t asked and I hadn’t left the possibility of a stable future because of her. Then again, she had never made any promises. There had never been an expectation of her from me and thus I didn’t blame her. We didn’t do anything to sort the blurry lines and details of our friendship but we didn’t do anything to break it apart. While it was true that Donovan’s absence made me gravitate more toward Miranda as if there was no counter weight in my pendulum, it is also true that the borrowed peace I had felt before was still there. I didn’t feel angst, or hurt, or ache when I thought of her and I didn’t cry myself to sleep thinking of how I didn’t have her.  
Instead we kept going to dinner and lunch and sharing our lives as if nothing in between mattered.  
One day she marched down into my offices, breezing through the lobby as if she owned the place. She stepped up to my desk and closed my laptop.  
“Miranda, hello to you to,” I say and try unsuccessfully to look past her and wonder what the rest of the staff was thinking.  
She smiles predatory and almost mischievously and then drops a paper bag down on my desk. I read the logo and smile back at her, “Did you get coffee?” As if on cue the office assistant walks in with a tray of coffee, sugar and cream.  
“Andrea, have you ever known me to not think of all the details?”  
I shake my head and open the bag from Mille-feuille bakery, “it smells delicious, but what prompted this?”  
She looks up and shrugs, “I haven’t had a pastry in a long time, and I thought if I brought you a bribe maybe you’d take a walk down central park with me?”  
I answer halfway through chewing, “I will always take a walk with you Miranda, I don’t need a bribe but I do appreciate it.”  
The bag of almond kisses gets demolished before the cup of coffee cools and we get up without a single world and walk down to the park.  
We walk for a long time and I wonder how she can stand it in heels but she does. We mostly talk about the twins and their father, about his new wife and how he doesn’t even want to see them. She confides in me that all she ever wanted was for them to have a good family and instead she’s given them divorces.  
I don’t say a single thing. It is my turn to listen to nod and ‘uh hu’ in the right places. We take more than an hour for lunch, after a while we sit in the beautiful benches that line the park and watch the foliage sway in the gentle breeze. She seems distant as she tells me about the new wife of the twin’s dad and how he doesn’t even want to take them in for the weekend. I want to ask her if Stephan is a good father figure but I don’t want to bring him up. The sun starts to dip in the city skyline and we agree that maybe it’s time to head back. We walk back in silence, content to have each other’s company, she loops her arm with mine and we only break apart at the entrance of the building.  
The lunches become a ritual too, she doesn’t come down any more but we meet once or twice a week at a basic Chinese place a block away from the magazine. It is a small mom and pop store, with a creaky wooden door and faded red booths. The Chinese chicken is amazing and they give us free wontons after a while. The server’s name is Nancy and she speaks broken English but always has a smile and keeps our green tea filled. In those months that follow I don’t date anyone but I decide that it was time to build friendships. I call Nigel and invite him over to my now decent apartment high rise I have just finished decorating. We talk shop and non-consequential critique of over Gin and tonics every two weeks. He becomes someone who knows but never asks. He sometimes stops whatever conversation and genuinely asks, “are you truly okay?” I nod, because I am. I use those months to discover who I have become. Who this halfway person is, what motivates her, where does she want to go. I was no longer Andy, the idealist journalism student who honestly believed that New York would be easy. I no thought a degree and good luck would land me the dream job. I was not her anymore, the Midwesterner who passed as native but was dismissed as soon as she opened her mouth. I wasn’t her, but I wasn’t the Andréa that worked at Runway either. I wasn’t dying for approval from Miranda. I wasn’t dying for her to hold my hand in secret. I no longer would stand to be the dirty secret, I didn’t want to lie anymore. I was this in between discovery. I was half honest but understood that life sometimes needs a lie. I was half idealistic but saw reality for what it was. I didn’t need Miranda’s approval because I had her friendship and I had found my own two feet. I focused on what was important to me, the magazine, school and my close friends. I didn’t need anything else.  
I went in search of Doug and Lilly because they had mattered and they in turn opened their life again to me. I apologized, not for changing but for leaving without a warning. Lily was the hardest to come around, she took her time and when she finally agreed to coffee she smiled and started with only one line, “promise me you’ll never let us fade away again.”  
“I promise,” I said. Neither of them brought up Nate but I needed closure for him too. I asked about him.  
“He’s in Boston, he got a job at a Zagat rated restaurant. He’s good Andrea, he’s seeing a new girl just this year. She’s also a chef and they seem to belong together,” Doug said.  
I nod, “good.”  
We form a grown-up bond, we’re no longer the college students sleeping over at each other’s dorms. We’re also not the recent grads drinking shots after work. We are young adults as the media describes us. Lily is engaged to a teacher she met in one of the gallery openings. Her unruly curly hair has been subdued with a straighter, she’s learned how to use black eyeliner and she mostly dresses in black slacks and matching blazers. She still works at the same gallery but she also curates for small museums. I offer to have my cousin Lisa help her get more experience with her clients. At first, she declines, the healed friendship is too young for that kind of favor, but after a while she agrees.  
“New York is all about who you know,” I say and she nods, “sad statement in our times.”  
“But true,” I say.  
“Is that how you got to work at Conde Nast?” she asks and it’s the first time she really has asked about my new life.  
“In a way,” I say.  
“So, Miranda didn’t turn out to be such a Dragon after all?” she asks.  
I shake my head, I want to say that she could be, that she broke my heart, but that she could also be soft and pliable and fragile. That she was my best friend, and somewhere in the back of my heart the love of my life.  
“No, she didn’t,” I simply say.  
“Is she nice to you now?” Lily asks.  
“She’s like a mentor,” I offer and it pacifies the conversation.

Doug has been promoted to department manager at the firm he worked at. He is still single and still has impeccable taste. He has put a bid on a small flat out in Brooklynn and though it’s a drive he plans to use it for a while then rent it out. “A financial analyst has to analyze the market,” he tells me often and I admire him for always knowing what he wanted.  
He’s more intuitive than Lily and asks about Miranda, “Miranda doesn’t mentor Andrea, she is a force to be reckoned with, there is no halfway with her,” he said one day as we were walking over to my house with ingredients for dinner.  
“I don’t know what you mean?”  
“Lily told me she was your mentor?” he asks but I get the feeling it’s not a question. I answer anyway. I answer looking at the sky-blue heaven that hung above the city with cotton clouds and birds passing too close to the sun.  
“Yes.”  
“Do you love her still?” he deadpans as I push the elevator key harder to avoid his answer. The doors open miraculously and I hurriedly step inside. He follows.  
I shake my head.  
He doesn’t ask again, but my silence has confirmed his suspicion. We were something and I loved her, or love her, or something. I’m not afraid that he will turn it on me and he doesn’t.  
“You know you can always talk to me about anything?” he confirms as he leaves that night.  
I nod, “I don’t’ want to talk about her Doug, her and I are just friends now.”  
“Fair enough,” he says and walks away.  
We have real jobs and real lives, so we email each other quirky jokes and make plans to meet each weekend although we mostly break them and end up only doing fireside chats in my balcony once a month. All in all, my social circle keeps me occupied, the people that belong to it are exactly the ones I want in it.  
Miranda and I keep dining together more and more often, I believe it’s because she doesn’t want to be at home. If it wasn’t’ for her dinner invitations I’d just be eating microwave heated noodles and cheap wine.  
“Do you not get tired of dinning with me?” she asks one of those days.  
I shake my head and gulp the bite of ahi tuna and cilantro that I was savoring.  
“If it wasn’t for your invitations I’d be surviving of cheap wine and ramen.”  
She laughs, “I’m glad I keep you from starving, thought that was not the response I was hoping for.”  
I take another bite of tuna as to make my point, “I don’t’ see any more important reasons than food. Food is life.”  
“I don’t know how I can be your friend Andrea,” she rolls her eyes and feigns indignation.  
“Because I am perfect,” I say.  
“You are indeed, I believe I’ve told you that before,” she notes and I eat more food, I shove it into my mouth like I was starving, because she has. She has said that before. She told me that in Paris.  
“Mrs. Priestly you know I joke, dinners with you are the highlight of my week, I enjoy every single one of them. I enjoy seeing you and hearing your stories and sharing life with my friend,” I say meaning every single word of it.  
“Mrs. Priestly? I like the sound of that. I think I’m going to make you call me that from now on.”  
“Only if you call me Ms. Sachs,” I reproach.  
She shakes her head, “you’re impossible Andrea but for some reason the girls want to see you again.”  
I stop over at the house that night, and the following time we have dinner and the time after that. Then I stop after lunch and on days when we haven’t even seen each other. The girls become some sort of younger sisters to me, they call and they text. Somehow, I end up being in charge of taking them to dance classes. I wasn’t forced into it, I wasn’t given it as a task, the girls simply asked once and then they asked again and then it became a routine. I’d pick them up from the house every Saturday morning and drop them off at class. I’d pick them up two hours later and take them out for ice cream or a lemonade. It was our Saturday fun, I was like a fun aunt to them, a rarity for her mother to have friends, close friends, friends she let in her house and their lives. On rare occasions Miranda would open the door when I dropped them off and ask me to come inside.  
That night the girls fell asleep on the couch, “I’ll help you get them upstairs,” I say and she shakes her head.  
“Gabby can do it,” Miranda insists.  
“Miranda it’s fine,” I say rousing the twins. Caroline wakes up eyes puffy and narrow annoyed but compliant and walks off murmuring something about tomorrow and thank you. Cassidy takes longer, she turns around in the sofa and grumbles. Miranda watches me try and convince her daughter to get up. She leans on the bar stool, beige two- piece suit draping over her and a glass of single malt whiskey being nursed in her hand.  
When Cassidy finally gets up, I have to walk her up the stairs, “will you be here tomorrow?” she asks. It’s an odd question because I’ve never stayed when she’s there.  
“I have to go home Cass but I’ll see you soon,” I say.  
“You should stay forever,” she says and leans in for a soft hug before she runs off to bed. I turn to Miranda who’s heard every word her child has said. I smile and shake my head but she doesn’t find it funny.  
“What happens when you leave for good? Hmm?” she asks and I’m not expecting that question.  
“Why would you say that?” I ask and the only thing I can think of is Conde Nast and the travel editor position. Miranda’s aquamarine eyes gaze at me and she pours another glass of whiskey. I walk over to the bar, it’s light wood and black interlaces. There are two stools that sit in front of it and a mirror that covers the whole back wall of it.  
I take the glass she has poured and now sits alone on the bar-top. We walk over to the couch, we sit on opposite couches, one in front of the other as if we weren’t friends at all.  
“Arlene offered me the travel editor position,” I say and I’m not sure why I offer that information up. I’m not going to take it, I had told myself.  
Miranda glances over at me, “I know.”  
“I don’t know if I’ll take it.”  
“Are you asking my permission?” she laughs. It hurts that she does as if she has dismissed my feelings.  
“I would miss you,” I confess.  
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d forget about me as soon as you got there. It is an opportunity you can’t pass and I know you will choose it,” she says gulping the last of the maroon liquid that twirled in her glass.  
“How do you know?” my question is quiet and pauses. She looks me over agonizingly slow, from the top of head to the tip of the black leather flats I’m wearing and she sighs. Her gaze is a mixture of longing and anger as if I had done something wrong.  
“Because you’re a lot like me. You’ll end up doing what’s good for your career. And I wouldn’t want it if you didn’t, I want you to be a great writer, or editor or whatever you want to be.”  
“Only because I knew you,” I bark back bitterly. I don’t like where this is going, yet suddenly all the anger I had felt at the transfer bubbles to the surface. Perhaps it’s her cold stance across the coffee table, or her attitude about me leaving. Perhaps it was Cassidy’s words telling me to stay forever but I suddenly remember I don’t deserve that post at the magazine.  
“Really Andrea? You think I would want to hide you so bad that I’d give you a tittle you didn’t deserve?” she asks arching an eyebrow.  
I nod.  
“Wow, then you really don’t know me.”  
“You and I both know I would have never gotten assistant editor without experience!” I say raising my voice.  
She looks around to make sure no one was listening. I feel bad for raising my voice.  
“You’re absolutely fucking right,” she says and I never heard her use profanity. “It’s called an acquaintance, it’s called networking, it’s called help. I put you up for the job because you wanted a change, because I knew you had the talent and the potential. I sent Arlene a few of your work samples and she agreed. She never would have taken you on if you didn’t know shit. Did you lack experience? Yes, but did we both think you could do it, Yes…” she stops but I don’t interrupt because I want to hear what she has to say.  
“I didn’t have to help you get a fancy tittle Andrea, I did it because I … care. I… also knew that you had talent and if I could help you make the path easier then why not? Women should empower each other, friends should build each other up. Was I wrong? Were you not able to do a fantastic job? Arlene would never offer you an editor position without assurance that you have the potential? Why do you doubt yourself?”  
I keep sipping the drink in my hand, “How much does she know?” I ask suddenly.  
“That you are a great assistant, that you were going to leave and I saw potential in you.”  
“I only have that position because I slept with you,” I say plain and simple.  
There is a long pause, I see her swallow and I look defiantly at the editor sitting in front of me.  
“If that’s what you want to believe. I don’t agree. Do friends in high places help? They do, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have the talent I see in you,” her words are loud and clear cut. This is the loudest I’ve ever seen her speak and her eyes that a few moments ago were a sea of calm are now a storm.  
She’s up from the sofa and leaning over me in a matter of seconds. She’s so close to me over the sofa that I can see down her cleavage and I can smell the notes of her perfume. She lingers over me, resting one hand on the back of the sofa. She’s so close her breath caresses my cheek and I close my eyes in anticipation for something. She is inches away from my lips, the tip of her hair is falling over my forehead.  
“You should go, Andrea,” she whispers into my ear and it’s definitely not what I was anticipating. For those few moments, I thought she was going to kiss me. She murmurs those four words and then walks away taking my glass with her and not bothering to say goodnight.  
I know she didn’t mean I should go at that moment, she didn’t mean I should go for the night, she means I should go to England.

I’m left there in that empty living room, sitting in an expensive couch looking at abstract painting and books. I am left there in the solitude of a house full of people to wonder again for the third time in less than two years, who I am and who I want to become.  
The uncertainty I feel feeds of my sadness and I simply sit there, paralyzed. For a single, moment I contemplate following her up to the room, to the bedroom where we have had sex before and ask her so many things. I contemplate in that beating, pulsing second to grab her by the arms and make her listen to every flailing sentiment I have felt. Every single heartbreaking, breathless instant where I thought I was going to die, when I had laid in bed gasping for air. I want to make her listen to all I have given up for her, I want to scream it to her face. I want to make her understand that all I want is her friendship and to be near her, to be part of her life. I say it in my mind, I scream it at the top of my lungs in my head. Then I realize how pathetic the words sound, how desperate, how clingy I have become. I realize that it hadn’t ached because I had muted the pain, I had shut it off to be next to her. I had made a deal with myself, one that not even I had noticed. I had wanted to be close to her so much that I had let my heart bleed without noticing it.  
Moth to the Fire.


	9. Frank and Dean

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything with you was so complicated
> 
> Don't you see? I just want to be with you?
> 
> You made everything so hard
> 
> Don't you see? All I wanted was to hear the same from you.

I get out of the house as fast as I can. I run out, coat in hand, shoes slipping, bag barely hanging on. I run down the stairs like I’m on fire, wings clipped from getting too close to the flame.  
I run a few blocks down and when the anger and the energy dies down I sit down in some grungy staircase, as grungy as Upper East side can get, and cry. The lights blur and I don’t care if people see me, I don’t care what they think. It feels liberating to cry, to cry for everything that the last two years has meant. When Miranda left me I cried for her, I cried for her absence, for the broken relationship, for the irreconcilable silence that came after that day. This was different, here in the darkness of the night I was crying for me. I was crying for the loss of innocence, for Andy and for Andréa and her impossible love. I was crying for the in-between girl who had been blind, I was crying for Donovan and Miranda and the twins. I was crying for my dreams of reporting and my family. I was crying for being naïve and because I finally knew where I stood. I was crying because I could not turn back time. I was crying because I knew that there were graver problems in the world that needed solving, hunger and poverty and war. I was in a privileged position, deciding if I should take an editorial job with one of the most important publications in lifestyle, one that required travel and seeing amazing places and meeting wonderful people. How many human beings on this Earth get those opportunities?  
I cried until the unfortunate owner of the house, a blonde woman came out wrapped in a black sweater and tight jeans and asked if I was okay.  
“Do you need help?” she asked. I’m sure her first though was that I was a homeless and she needed to call an ambulance or the police. Upon further inspection, she saw the tailored silk blouse, tucked in vintage jeans and the expensive outdoor wool coat, she saw the mascara streaks down my face and the Chanel watch as I tried to wipe them away.  
Her demeanor changed into a soothing, worried look and I did the one thing you should never do in New York. I walked into a stranger’s home in the middle of the night.  
“Would you like a cup of coffee?” she had asked a low deep voice and strained notes.  
I followed her through the open door, into the foyer. The house was smaller than Miranda’s but just as luxurious.  
“Ms. Archer is everything alright?” an older woman came in and asked.  
“Everything is fine Yolanda, go to bed,” Ms. Archer said calmly and sweetly to the maid.  
After she had walked away she asked for my coat and bag and said, “I’m Caroline.”  
I smiled at the coincidence. “Andrea Sachs,” I say extending out my hand.  
The coffee is prepared in silence, we wait for the water to brew and for it to drip down to the porcelain cup placed in front of it. It was a magical new expresso machine and the wait was only a few minutes for both cups. The rich aroma filled the room and for a second I almost forgot that I didn’t know this woman.  
“What makes a young, well -dressed woman like you sit and cry outside my front porch?” she asks.  
“The fact that I’ve been a complete idiot for the past two years. I’ve taken decisions I never thought I’d take and now when confronted with the truths I feel so confused.”  
“We all take bad roads sometimes Andrea, what we do after is what defines us,” she states and I sigh taking more precious black liquid.  
“I had an affair with someone who is married,” I say softly, and look up expecting to see judgement in her eyes. There is none.  
“Okay.”  
“We had an affair for a whole year. I thought I was over them, but I am not. I still love them like the first day.”  
She seems to ponder the words I have just said, the décor for the house is pale pink and brown. It’s an odd combination to think of at first but it works great. There are tall lamps that reflect soft white light out into the rooms and the rough metal tables provide a nice contrast. It almost looks like a gallery.  
“I understand. My husband had an affair too, years ago and I thought the best revenge was to do the same. I picked out someone, anyone, and I fucked them every chance I got. This young man who was my aerobics coach was so much younger than I was. He seemed to like me. He didn’t want my money, or my gifts, he simply wanted me. I thought I was crazy for thinking that, someone like him does not fall in love with me. And unknowingly I fell in love too. We all know how this story ends, Andrea,” she says my name as if to remind herself she’s talking to someone.  
“You left him,” I interrupt.  
“I did,” she says defiantly.  
“I could not risk my reputation, my family, my business. I left him and he stayed behind a few more years as someone in the company, a friend you could say. It was good knowing he was there, I took him for granted and at the same time I wanted him to leave. He did eventually.”  
“And you regret it?” I ask not knowing what she will say.  
She nods. She doesn’t need to answer with words, I can see the pain in her eyes.  
“But, I don’t dwell on it anymore. I have two beautiful kids who I love and a good life.”  
“And him?” I ask.  
“He left New York, started his own company. He’s quite successful from what I hear.”  
“You still know about him?”  
“He never married, you know?” she smiles. She’s probably in her late 50’s, average build, blue veins showing through her hands, she’s got a diamond ring on her right hand but no wedding band. Her hair is blonde styled straight, she’s got no makeup on probably because of the hour and her light brown eyes are large and expressive.  
“Do you love him?” I ask. It was the most intimate question to ask a stranger, a stranger who had invited me into their posh Manhattan home in the middle of the nigh. Perhaps that’s what made me do it, that is what made it acceptable, I would never see this woman again.  
“I do,” she says so softly it sounds like a lament.  
“And your husband?” I ask again, unafraid of prying. She’s the one who told me the story. She wants to talk about it, perhaps I didn’t stop here because I was tired and out of breath, perhaps we both needed to know we weren’t alone. “I divorced him anyway, two years later. When we signed the papers, he told me he felt sorry for me. I didn’t understand what he meant then. I had gotten the house and the kids, and half his money. Then he said that all his liaisons had meant nothing. He fucked them and left, they were notches on his belt, he never loved them. I on the other hand would live with this one affair for the rest of my life.”  
“He was right,” she finishes after a pause.  
I stay silent. I don’t know what to say.  
“Caroline, you have never thought of reaching out to him?” I question.  
She nods, “I have but I would not want to live with the angst of him leaving me, him finding someone younger. I’m too old for that my dear, I am better off this way. I have found a settled peace with myself.”  
“I understand,” I sip the last of the coffee.  
“Much like I feel you’re about to do.”  
I nod, “thank you for coffee Caroline.”  
She smiles, wrinkles peak out about her face. She pulls flyaway hairs away from my face. In less than an hour I have shared the deepest contents of my life with her and she has with me. That connects us in a basic human sense.  
“You’re welcome, would you like me to call you a cab?”  
I nod and I wait in silence outside the stairs. My makeup is clean now and I’ve put on my coat, rearranged my hair and decided that tomorrow I’m going to accept the job.

Miranda beats me once again. When I walk into Arlene’s office she looks up at me and smiles.  
“Arlene, I wanted to…” before I finish the sentence she hands over a shiny black folder with the Elias Clarke logo and a British Airways envelope.  
“I thought you might need this,” she stretches her hand and waits for me to pick the items up.  
“Wow, you’re very good at guessing or someone told you,” I say opting for the latter.  
She chuckles, “tell me what made you decide?”  
“It’s a great opportunity Arlene. We both know I’m focused on my career and what a better way. I had a few doubts about my development and skill?” I say questioning myself, I am fishing for a compliment but she doesn’t hand one out. We’re too professional for that.  
“You thought that because someone recommended you for the job, you hadn’t earned it,” she says.  
I gulp down saliva, I nod.  
“You’re wrong. I may be nicer than your friend at Runway but I am just as demanding for good talent. I read your samples, I know your ethic, I knew you could do. And if you beat out other skilled candidates so what? Life isn’t always fair, why not take help when we can get it, that is what separates the most successful people, the one percent as the media tries to tryst.”  
“I know,” I say, “that’s why I’m ready to go. I do have to wait for graduation in three weeks.”  
“Fair enough,” she accepts, “I do have an assignment for you here anyway. Miranda called and said she wanted the new travel editor to interview Aireen Omar the CEO for Air Asia,” she pauses.  
“That’s how you knew?” I ask sounding petty.  
“I guessed, like you said I’m good at guessing.”  
I laugh and take a few steps toward the door, “I’ll reach out to Aireen’s office.”  
“Andrea…” she calls out, I stop and twirl to look at her.  
She’s walking toward me, for a brief moment I think she’s going to say never mind I don’t get the job, then I think it’s probably just congratulations.  
I was wrong.  
She blinks, her blond eyelashes cover her majestic eyes for a second.  
“Running away from our problems is never a good idea; neither is, running away from the people we love.”  
“She doesn’t love me,” I say rapidly and then I freeze. I just told my boss the real reason why I want to run away from New York. Why I want to be out of here as often as possible.  
She leans in, “I think she does.”  
“You always knew, didn’t you?” I ask fearing the worst.  
“No, I didn’t know. I don’t know, but I can guess. I’ve known Miranda for many years. We worked at Harpers together. I know when she has a good assistant she appreciates … going through all those hoops for you, the friendship, you weren’t just a good assistant, she cares about you, I would dare to say she loves you.”  
We’re standing by the glass door to her office, I don’t say a thing.  
“The thing you have to understand about her, is that she’s driven by the love for her kids and the fear of getting hurt.”  
She doesn’t say anything else. I look up at her, “no one knows,” I say.  
“Know what?” she winks and trails back to her desk.  
“Thank you, Arlene,” I say.  
“Think over what I said, Andrea. By the way this is my verbal RSVP to your graduation.”  
“I’m honored,” I say and walk out of the office before she gets the chance to ask if Miranda will be there. I haven’t told her. I’m afraid she’ll agree and then she’ll have to meet my family and my friends and sit next to Arlene. I shake my head at the thought. No, that would not do.

I see Miranda the weekend before my graduation. We hadn’t dined or had lunch ever since the night at the townhouse. I didn’t go to pick up the twins for dance class and they didn’t call to ask why. I wonder what Miranda told them, I wonder if she took them? I wonder if she made Gaby do it, paid her extra and had her take one less day off.  
“That’s what we pay people for, Andrea,” she had told me when we drove to Maine once.  
I see her at Nigel’s birthday soiree. It’s an intimate affair at his flat, a few industry people and some friends I don’t know. I’m surprised to see Miranda there, I would not take her as someone who attends her staff’s parties.  
“Nigel is not just my employee Andrea, he’s a friend. Probably the closest thing I have to a friend after you, and if I have to endure Emily and Jocelyn and James Holt for a few hours so be it.”  
“Good evening Miranda,” I say.  
“I though we didn’t need introductions like that anymore, not after all we’ve been through.”  
“How do you always know what I’m thinking?” I ask, she shrugs and looks as if she’s about to answer when Nigel appears decked in a black turtle neck, matching black pants a leopard print scarf.  
“Six! I’m glad you could make it!” Nigel yells from across the room and I’m glad for the interruption. I’ve pulled my hair back this time around, it seemed like a good idea with the off-the shoulder Armani I had convinced Emily to pull out of the closet for me. I used all the clothes I had given her from Paris as a lever and she agreed. We had become acquaintances, not friends, not colleges, an undefined partnership of shared experiences and odd favors.  
It was deep burgundy trimmed in light gold, vintage gold.  
I walked away from Miranda, and into the party. There were drinks and food and music. After two or three hours, the guest had trickled down. I had arrived almost at midnight after all and now it was nearing three in the morning. Nigel chatted animatedly with a young gentleman probably in his late 30’s, in a white t-shirt and dark jeans. Miranda walks over to the bar table where both men where and sits next to Nigel. He serves her another drink. She has had a few drinks, but not too many. I’ve probably had less because I don’t want to say or do something I’ll later regret.  
“Let’s do a shot,” the man whose name is Jack and who I have learned is a friend of Nigel’s younger sister.  
Miranda shakes her head, “Oh, no, no, I can’t.”  
Her slightly faded lipstick stained lips pout and she raises her icy blue eyes to look at Jack.  
“Come on Miranda, it’s a celebration,” the young man insists.  
Again, she shakes her head, she doesn’t look annoyed simply embarrassed. Her pale cheeks color and she looks over at me.  
“How about you Andy?” Nigel asks handing me a shot glass full of tequila. The smell alone was strong, nauseating I was not a fan of tequila. Nevertheless, I nod and I’m handed a lime as a reward.  
“Last chance Miranda,” he looks over at me as I could magically say a word that will convince her. I take a deep breath.  
“Come on Mrs. Priestly for friendship?” I say tentatively and hand her my shot glass. She gazes at me her blue meets my brown. We see each other in the apple of our eyes and then she breaks the locked gaze, takes the tequila from my hand and nods.  
“Fine, but if we do it, we all take two,” she says.  
Jack woops and yells, “fuck yeah!”  
Miranda laughs as Nigel pours four more shots and mouths ‘wow’ at no one in particular.  
“I don’t think I should,” I say.  
“Come on Ms. Sachs? For friendship?”  
“Oh shit,” is all I hear and I’m not sure if it’s from Nigel or Jack. We do it, we shoot back the tequila and I’ve never seen Miranda so ungraciously put a glass down or take a shot of anything, I note this down as a memory for someday. I note this as something to ask about someday, somewhere.  
To our surprise party boy Jack turns around and says, “who wants to listen to some Sinatra?”  
“Be my guest,” Nigel proclaims and the young man procures his phone and connects to it the stereo.  
This was not something we ever did. We weren’t in the habit of accepting shots that was left for our younger selves when we were naïve. That night was different in some way. The two martinis I had drank had affected me more than usual, the slight chill of the night against her hand, it seemed like a night to take chances.  
“Would you like to dance?” Jacks voice interrupted my thoughts and he asked Miranda.  
“Sure,” Miranda answered for both of us and she shared a dance with this stranger in a white t-shirt. The song ended and she leaned against the stool.  
“Would you two like to dance now?” she asked referring to him and I.  
I nodded but all I could see was her two eyes staring at me from across the table, her perfect hair falling and her salmon colored blouse. I wanted to kiss her.  
“I don’t think she wants to dance with me,” Jack correctly argued, “she wants to dance with you.” Miranda scoffs as if to waive it off but I answer too fast for her to do so.  
“I do,” I said picking up his phone that was providing the vintage music all too loud for it to be almost three in the morning.

If we only got to keep one memory from every person that we met, this moment would be it. Miranda looking at me from across the low-lit room, barefooted on the hardwood floor of someone else’s home. She was perfection as she glided from the stool where she had been half reclining and with a small barely detectable smile offered me her hand to dance. The tight pencil skirt she wore was no impediment as she grabbed my waist and led me along to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Her hand gripped my waist and I chuckled at how oddly romantic and yet strange this moment was.  
‘You’re nobody till somebody loves you’ Dean Martin crooned over the speakers and she twirled me as if she had been practicing this move her whole life. We turned softly right hand in left, she pulled me closer just before she let me go to do a twirl. We were perfect, at least for having a few drinks. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her smile as we danced half-conscious but mostly oblivious to Jack and Nigel watching from a few feet away. The dance turned into two and three until she stopped with the ending of ‘strangers in the night’ and whispered she wanted a glass of water. I followed her to the deserted kitchen where I finally got the nerve to tell her.  
“My graduation is coming up,” I drop as if it was the most unimportant thing in the world.  
“Is it?” she asks.  
“it is,” I say out loud because she’s not looking at me. She’s fidgeting at the fridge trying to find ice.  
“You should come,” I say hesitantly.  
I didn’t even make an effort to hide the discomfort from my voice. She has the tact to say that she’s got the twins last recital. I don’t argue with her excuse. She reaches for her purse at the edge of the chair and takes out a large white envelope from it. It is 9 by 11’, the size of a regular piece of paper. It’s sealed with the type of clasps you put on important papers and it has a logo stamp with something realty on it.  
I breathe fast, “Congratulations Andrea,” she murmurs.  
I hesitate to open it, she slides it toward me, “Open it.”  
I hold it in my hands for a moment, “Miranda I feel like this will be something you should not have …”  
“Open it,” she demands and her voice resembles that time she went into a speech about cerulean blue and fashion gowns over two identical belts.  
I open it and I hold in my hands the deed to the apartment I was renting. The high -rise condo in the middle of the city, with gilded elevator and a bell man.  
I look up at her and don’t have words to say. A gift like this would warrant a hug, and yelps and maybe even jumping up and down, but not with Miranda. I didn’t understand what she was trying to do.  
“I wanted you to always have something to bring you back to New York,” she smiles as I grind my teeth.  
“Miranda, I can’t,” I start.  
“Hush, it wasn’t that much, we used the rent-to buy option, so they credited all your payments. I knew it would make you feel better. Now, Andrea humor me, take it and that way you’ll always have somewhere to stay when you come home.”  
The tears welled up inside, spring forth at the tenderness of her words. She walks toward me, very slowly, purse still in hand, the clicks of her heels echo on the floor, one, two, three, four, five. She wipes the tears with her thumb and leans in so slowly to kiss me, our eyes lock and she misses my cheek on purpose, her lips landing on the very far corner of my lips.  
“Goodnight Andrea,” she whispers.  
I know it’s the last time I will see her for an unknown period of time. I was leaving for London in slightly over a week, I didn’t know if I would ever see her again. If the few months I spent away would morph into years of silence, silence that we would opt for as to avoid this unidentified relationship.  
Arlene’s words fluttered in my head as I saw her walk out of the kitchen, Miranda was afraid of getting hurt, was I hurting her by leaving? Probably, but I didn’t deserve this life to be her lover, her always friend, her follower. I deserved better and she knew it, perhaps that night at her home she had realized it. She had realized that we would be better apart and yet I know held in my hands the deed to property in New York.  
“So that you always have something to bring you back,” she had said.  
That fucking woman was so cryptic, did this mean there was a future for us? Or was it a remember me by gift.  
“Goodnight Miranda, “I whisper into her absence.

 

The following morning as I awoke alone in my own bed with a headache and a memory I will never forget.  
Roses arrived that afternoon at my work with two simple sentences written on a blank card.  
“You’re nobody till somebody loves you,” followed by “All my best wishes, good luck, graduate.”  
There was no name because there didn’t need to be, I knew who they were from.


	10. London

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The infatuating smile you got  
> On this spring day.  
> Capricious like you, London.
> 
> I can't stop myself from  
> Stumbling back to you.

I called Doug to come help me put sheets over the furniture and I called Nigel to help me pack essentials I would need in London.   
“You know you can just buy perfume in London, right?” he huffed annoyed.   
“It’s not like I’m making millions Nigel,” I reproach back.  
“Don’t be petty six, you’re making much more than most recent college grads,” he said and he was right.   
“True, “I say.  
“Jewelry?” he asks unrolling what looked like a jewelry hanger to wrap the few items I owned.  
“This?” he points to a faux pearl necklace, I shake my head.   
“It screams Melrose place,” I say not referring to the show but to the actual place.  
“And this?” he says raising an eyebrow and pointing to the Chanel watch, the one Miranda had given me.  
“I feel like this would not be something you spent your first pay check on?”  
I shake my head, “too flashy.”  
“Too flashy? Chanel is never too flashy. I fear I haven’t taught you right. I’m packing it.”  
“No,” I say.  
He sneers, “No?”  
“No, Nigel please.”  
He takes a deep breath, “are you running away Andy? Was the lower floor not far enough?” His eyes go soft and he eyes me as if I were made of glass. I plop down on the sofa that Doug and I had covered the day before.   
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say and take the watch out of the velour wrap placing it back in the jewelry box.  
“Don’t. You already told me once you were falling in love with her, I don’t need you to play coy. I know both of you, and the other night? The dance? The walking away to the kitchen? Her not showing up at the graduation? I’m not dumb, I like to think I’m smart but then who knows. Regardless, I know how you feel for her,” he pauses.  
I look up at him, “Don’t you fucking dare to say I told you so.”  
“Okay,” I can tell it’s taking all his strength to hold it in. He wants to say it.  
I appreciate him more when he just opens the box again and starts rummaging through the leftover pieces.  
“And this?” he says pointing to the Cartier necklace.   
The Cartier necklace is a compromise. It brings out the best and the worst of our relationship and unlike the unnecessary watch, the necklace was delicate and it brought back memories of getting to know Miranda past the mask.  
“I’ll take it,” I answer adding, “I do love her Nigel, but I don’t know what she wants from me.”  
“Oh, sweetheart I’ve been asking myself that a for 15 years now,” he says coming over to where I’m sitting, pulling my locks to the side and clasping the necklace around my neck.  
“She bought me an apartment,” I say unsure of why I’m confessing everything to her closest employee.  
“I know,” he says.   
I don’t respond, of course he knew. I am not bothered by it, in a way it’s comforting to know we both trust the same person. That we have the same confidant.   
“I think this trip is good for you Andy, it will serve to get you away from Miranda. You’re too young to be so sad. Now you must promise me in London, you will be wild, you’ll party and kiss every guy … or girl at the bar and have a lot of fun okay?”  
I don’t answer, I roll my eyes and shake my head, dismissing his comments.  
“Okay?” he remarks again looking me in the eyes and raising his brows.  
“Yes, fine. I’ll send you pictures of all my naked beaus,” I joke.  
“Only if they’re hot and have tattoos,” he jokes.  
“We’re almost done here, I’ll buy you a round of drinks after all god knows when you’ll deign to come back home,” he says wrapping the jewelry in velour and strapping it to a Louis Vuitton make up case he insisted I buy.

The last day before I left I had one more visitor, as unexpected as could be. The concierge announced them as friends from Runway who didn’t want to give their name. I let them in anyway, because who cares. To my surprise Caroline and Cassidy showed up at my door, with a teal wrapped box and three cups of Starbucks coffee.  
“What are you two doing here?” I ask knowing well that they were here to say goodbye.   
“You were going to leave without saying goodbye,” Caroline speaks up putting the coffees down.  
“We brought you a gift, a parting gift,” she adds.  
“I’m not going away forever, it’s just a business trip. I’ll be back,” I say trying to sound confident.  
The two teenagers stand in the living room, eying the room covered in sheets and the few suitcases piled against the wall. I knew the explanation would not hold up. Caroline is wrapped in a hoodie that says, “I’m fabulous” paired with ripped jeans and Cassidy is wearing a beautiful black lace dress with ballet flats and burgundy hair.  
“You dyed your hair?” I ask slightly shocked.  
“Yes,” she answers and they hand over one of the coffee cups.  
“Miranda let you?”  
“Mom, doesn’t care,” she says rolling her eyes.  
“Okay...” I felt that if I asked why, there would be an explanation I could not reel in. I felt guilty but I didn’t want to be drawn in again. I was leaving tomorrow, besides that’s what Miranda and Stephan were for.  
“Why are you leaving mom?” Caroline ask flat out and without a precursor, her fierce eyes look straight at me.  
“I don’t know what you mean, your mom and I are friends,” I say stuttering at the end.  
“Bullshit, Andrea you love her,” Cassidy says out of nowhere and I’m not really surprised about her strength of character.   
“She drinks, you know? She drinks all the time now, more than before you started coming around. She drinks more than before you were her assistant,” Cassidy is paused by Caroline’s hand on her forearm.   
“I mean, mom always drank, since she married Stephan. Then you came along and she stopped and now she drinks more. She drinks when she gets home, and on her days off she drinks and goes to bed,” her words sound so deflated, the perfectly put together freckled girl is falling apart inside.  
“I wish I could help.“  
“You can! She fucking loves you!” Cassidy exclaims once again.   
“Why are you cussing?” Caroline questions.  
“Shut up, it’s not like mom doesn’t do it all the time.”  
“Maybe you should talk to Stephan, do you girls get along with him?” I ask. Part of me wants to hear they don’t that they hate him because then I would have a reason to stay but part of me wants then to say that he’s a great dad because then I could wash my hands and walk away. They opt for the latter.  
“He’s great with us. He really is like a dad but he cheats on mom,” they say in unison.  
“Girls, I don’t know what you want me to do,” I say and I know what they want.  
Two desperate pairs of eyes look at me. “Stay Andy, Stay.”  
I look at them, “I can’t bobseys,” I say.  
Cassidy shakes her head and rolls her eyes a sad half smile showing on her face, “Don’t! You don’t get to call us that! Not when you’re leaving,” she says and pulls Caroline up from the couch.   
“I hate you Andrea!” she says and throws the teal box that she had been holding at me.  
“Go as fucking far away as you can, and don’t come back. We don’t need you!”  
I don’t cry when they slam the door behind them, it hurts but I don’t cry. It’s not my responsibility to solve anyone’s problems. I grab the coffee that was still hot in my hands and add the remains of whisky that lounged in a bottle by the kitchen. I drink it slowly, checking that I have all the documents for the following day, laying out my outfit for the airport and finally falling asleep a few hours before I have to be at the airport. I don’t bother picking up the box laying on the floor next to the mosaic coffee table. 

London is everything I imagined it to be, cold and old and magnificent. I like it even more than Paris. It is less pretentious than Paris, though just as conceited. The London offices are housed in an old historic building about 5 blocks from where the Queen lives. The offices were smaller than in New York but just as organized inside. I got an office on the third floor, that semi overlooked the city but not the best view. Carmela the assistant editor was the one that led me around for the first few days. She had dark brown hair and was slightly overweight. I thought about how she would not fit at Runway and then chastised myself for making that judgement. 

On the flight there I worried that London will just be a sad expanse for me to sulk over Miranda, but I don’t. I am wonderfully star struck with all of the monuments, London bridge, the London tower, the castles, the day trips, the afternoon teas and the gardens. It is beautiful, I fall in love with the old city.   
I find it easy to make friends at the magazine, these Londoners are always up for a pint of beer and a shot of whiskey. I meet Mathew, Bryant and Helena who work for Conde Nast too, then I meet Barbie a photographer who works for National Geographic and Georgina her girlfriend who is a ballet dancer for the Royal Ballet. On assignment, I meet Luke Pasqualino and he introduces me to Lily Cole and Emilia Clarke. It is the craziest thing, I am constantly going to drinks, and dinners and parties. The girl who used to think Club Monaco was couture is constantly in designer dresses and it becomes surreal. I never imagined it, on weekdays I usually have drinks at Desir a bar two blocks away from the magazine. It’s dark and decorated in black leather couches, the music is low volume club and the drinks are strong. After a while Barbie starts to tag along with the dancers who only drink if they are not training. The managers often tag along. One Thursday Lily asks if I want to have drinks, I say I have plans and that’s how Luke and Lily both end at Desir. The dancers don’t fawn over them, although Helena does ask for a picture. It is so much fun, then there is the house party at Emilia’s new home, I bring Barbie and Georgina and they have so much grace they almost look like starts too.   
There I meet Jean a French director who has the most beautiful dark eyes I’ve ever seen and I forget how much I like light eyes. We start a conversation and I find his accent so endearing, endearing enough it draws me to bed and I don’t really regret it the next day.  
He starts coming over to drinks, except now we hang out at the Ritz over at Piccadilly where the drinks start at $20 Euros and the music is low and soft. After a few drinks there, we usually head over to some new club that has just opened or has a special invitation for someone in the crowd.  
Work becomes of secondary importance and I get lost in the glitz and freedom of this new world I have just found. It’s not like anything I’ve ever lived. It is just as glamorous as Miranda’s world, just as rich, just as cultural, just as judgmental, just as harsh but it was so free, so intoxicating. The loud music and the late nights, the star power and the alcohol it made me forget that I had run away from something. Jean and I did a free-dating thing; we were an item but we were not tied down to anything.   
“Do you plan to stay in London long?” Emilia asks one night as we sit down after dancing to some new band.  
“I don’t know, it depends on work.”  
“I’ll call the editor, I’ll tell him to keep you here,” she says half joking half serious.  
I laugh, “you’re different Andrea, I love it!” she says right before Luke spills a drink all over her Fendi dress and she blotches it off with a nearby napkin.  
“Now, I’ll just be delicious enough to drink,” she jokes with her usual joking demeanor and the night continues.  
After the season is over Georgina invites us all over to Russia where she’s from and though we all hesitate, we end up going because why not? The five- day vacation is filled with snow and some monument visiting. Mostly we visit Red Square and the Czar palace because we’re all filled with morbid thoughts about their murders.  
The cold is one more reason to drink vodka, not that we needed one and we have to take Helena over to the hospital for alcohol poisoning. I’m surprised they don’t take us all in, at how bad we all looked. Lily’s press team takes care that nothing leaks out to the media and it earns Georgina a scolding from Albert her manager.  
In the fog of so much going on around me I keep working on the given assignment for the next month’s edition and when I deliver it half fervently finished in an alcohol stupor like some mad Picasso, it earns me praise from Arlene via a skype call.  
When the edition comes out, I mail a copy over to Lili and Doug along with an invitation to come anytime they want. They reply with warm wishes and ‘I wish I could’.  
The party keeps going in their absence and three months turns into four and five and six.  
My famous acquaintances earn me special assignments, entrance to anything and special report on the homes in Cannes right on time for the Cannes film festival.  
Jean invites me as I had expected, “I have to bring my sister along too,” he says in his snazzy French accent and I nod.  
“Does she live in France?”  
He nods, “Marie is older than me by three minutes.”  
“You’re a twin?” I ask in disbelief.  
He nods again.

We fly out to Cannes and wait for his sister, she stands us up at the hotel and finally shows up a few minutes before we have to walk into one to the main showings.  
From what Jean had told me, their father was one of the top investors of Lancôme and because he had been the rebel of the family in his youth, Louis had left most of the money to Marie. She now funds his projects in a joint venture called, Dingy Films.  
It turns out Marie is even more beautiful than Jean. She makes an entrance in a low cut black gown, with studded crystals one side of her left hip, she extends her hand and smirks, “you must be Andréa? Non?”   
And she says my name just like Miranda but better, she’s taller than her brother and by definition taller than me. Her dark eyes are outlined in blue and glitter and her dark brown hair has glinted highlights of gold. She’s just like every picture of a French woman I have seen, gorgeous and mysterious and I want to know everything there is to know about her.  
The interest is mutual, “My brother has been keeping you all to himself,” she says at the after party.   
The lights hang from the empty sky and the warmth of the Riviera weather breezes by us.   
Jean shifts in discomfort and though he tries to take me out to the open-air bar and the sway of music, Marie clasps my hand and offers a chair, “Be a doll little brother and bring us a round of drinks, will you? Whiskey? “   
I nod. It was probably a bad decision because I sit there all night, Marie tells me about her job in marketing. She’s mostly involved in the family’s other assets which no longer include Lancôme. They had sold all their stock before his passing, now they mostly controlled real-state firms, and a few commodities.   
“My brother has always been the artist of the family, so I fund all his projects. He’s talented,” she smiles and leans in, “but don’t tell him.”  
I laugh. She mostly asks about me, about what I do in London, about how I ended up working for the magazine, about how I met Jean.  
“Well it was at Emilia’s party,” I say.  
“Emmy! I love her, she’s a doll. Though I’m not a big fan of movie actors,” she says.  
“Really?”  
She flips her hair as her phone beeps, she puts on glasses to read the text. She looks adorable, like an eyewear model.  
“What?” she says as she looks up and realizes I’m staring.  
“Sorry, you looked good. The glasses suit you,” I say and my voice shows my nervousness.  
She doesn’t comment but when the night is over she offers me a ride.  
“Shouldn’t we wait for Jean?” I ask.  
She shrugs, “Cannes isn’t over today, ma petite. We’ll see him tomorrow.”  
Butterflies dance in the pit of my stomach because I don’t know what she means by that, but I don’t have to wait long to find out. When the limo doors close and the car pulls away from the crows she puts her hand on my thigh and slowly raises the hem of my dress. She moves slowly, like a panther filled with grace. She leans in to me in order to get halfway up and settle on top of me. I don’t’ complain, I don’t reject her advances, I simply wrap my hands around the vast expanse of skin showing by her gown and tilt my head to reach her lips.  
I spend every moment after that with her in Cannes. Jean doesn’t say a single thing and though I barely see him, he seems unaffected.  
Another surreal moment, like a movie reel flowing in my head. I wonder if he’ll make a film about this someday.  
“Marie! Darling,” Emilia greets her as she enters her home.  
Marie has decided to fly to London with me for a while.   
I decide the perks of being a socialite are good ones and I let her come in, barge into my life, my house, my newfound friends.   
She tags along to every single after work drink get together, every weekend party in Chelsea and every brunch in Notting Hill. She goes to the Ritz and the club and lets me lay on her lap as we sit at home and watch old, classic movies.  
“She stole his last girlfriend too,” Emilia tells me once when I convince her to come over to our apartment.   
“We weren’t dating,” I say defensively.  
“I know! Besides I’m not judging. Marie is so much better,” she laughs just as Marie comes to sit by my side handing me a drink.  
“What are you telling mon amour,” she asks.  
“That you are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met,” Emilia wiggles her eyebrows and we laugh.  
“Ces’t vrai?” Marie asks joking and turns around to kiss me.  
This is so new, this being together with someone without having to worry about what people will say. I don’t explain it to anyone and people just simply accept it. There is no direct explanation that Marie and I are dating but the people that matter know. My friends at the magazine, Luke and Lily and Barbie. She takes me to Paris every other weekend, her beautiful old, turn of the century house of the 2nd Arrondisement and there too she takes me out without hesitation of what anyone will say. We go to every iconic restaurant, every fabled day trip and every museum.   
“I want to see the Louvre in private,” I ask because I’ve learned that in her world just like Miranda’s nothing is really impossible and I’m right.   
She has a friend on the board, she knows the curator and someone who is something somewhere. We get a private tour, and a private dinner and I sit in a complete empty room for a long time, contemplating the tiny Mona Lisa. She sits next to me and we gaze in silence at the woman who has captivated the imagination of so many over such a long period of time. Art, music, songs, movies, books about her, around her, dedicated to her, mentioning her all to come end here in this time portrait no bigger than a household pillow.  
Sometimes I think all this world is just like that, larger than life but really not important.   
After almost ten months in London and a few awkward conversations with Arlene about coming back to my post we agree that I will go back in two weeks.   
“You’re going home,” Marie states caressing my hair and reading the newspaper at the same time.  
“Uh hu,” I answer.  
“For how long?” she asks.  
“For a while,” I say.  
We’ve never said we love each other, we have never made promises or assumed a single thing; nevertheless, it feels odd leaving our life together.  
“What do we do now?” she asks.  
“We live day by day darling,” I say and I have never called her that. It doesn’t fit, doesn’t roll of my tongue.   
“Day by day…” she repeats. She sounds annoyed but there is nothing I could do. I didn’t want to return home either, I like this fast-paced life, this fast life people talked about, I like London, I liked Marie.  
She hesitates, “I’m going to Paris tomorrow, when do you leave?”  
“Next week.”   
“I’ll be back Monday or Tuesday,” she comments.  
“Are you mad?” I ask.  
Marie shakes her head, her hair that was pulled back into a long ponytail shakes as she does so, her eyes look up at me and a smile breaks her serious face.  
“No, work is work. I’ll come visit. New York is overdue for me anyway. I haven’t been in a few years.”  
“Okay, good,” I say and she nods rolling over to me and smothering whatever serious thoughts I was about to comment with kisses. I like Marie, it’s easy with her, and unlike Donovan I don’t have to think far ahead. She’s makes me laugh and she makes me think and cry and love to be alive.

That Friday Miranda shows up at the office. It’s the strangest vision, she stands there tall and thin draped over the arch of the door. Her black power suit contrasts the beige of the door paint, under the suit she’s wearing a white tux shirt and a red sash belt. The ensemble reminds me of the James Holt run through and how nervous I had been to be in the elevator with her.  
That was a long time ago, a whole lifetime ago. She has minimal makeup but her eyes are lined perfectly and her hair falls perfectly and she’s holding a dark wool coat in her hands.  
“Miranda, what a surprise,” I say enunciating her name as if to make myself believe that she really was there.  
“No welcome hug?” she asks.  
“Yeah … of course,” I say.  
I’m about to walk over and hug her when I’m saved by the bell or better explained Carmela. She walks in worried at seeing the editor,   
“Ms. Priestly, I was told you needed a few papers?”  
I look at Miranda in confusion, she’s got to be bluffing. What could possibly be so important for her to come in person, fly across the pond and tell this poor frazzled woman that she needed to come in.   
My mind screams … that it was me. I was what she came looking for but it can’t be.  
“Thank you, I do but I believe Andrea here can help me.”  
Carmela raises her eyebrows, “you must miss each-other” she concludes.  
It was common knowledge we had worked together I was after all her recommendation.  
I laughed shyly, “I doubt Miranda misses me, I am not as good as her other assistants.”  
“I think you’re far better,” she says and I don’t know if she really means it, if she’s insinuating a sexual point or both and I blush deeply.  
Again, I laugh awkwardly.  
“I don’t want to distract you Carmela, I’m sure Andrea here can help me,” she repeats and we know it’s a sure -fire way to dismiss her.  
“Of course, Andrea you got it?” She asks glad to be let go, relieved to not have to keep up the small talk.  
“Yeah sure,” I say.

“What do you need exactly?” I ask.  
“I need you,” she says reaching for a folder next to me. It’s just for a second, her hand brushes against my long fingers, the heat of her body pushes against my back and then it’s gone. She retrieves the folder out of my hands.  
“You’ve been avoiding me.”  
“I am coming home in a few days,” I explain.  
“So… you have been avoiding me.”  
“Miranda this isn’t the place,” What I really want to say is that it was her who shooed me away and I was tired of playing hard to get with her. I wanted to ask her leave to say that I had found someone to fill her bed space, someone who wasn’t ashamed of me, someone who for now was good enough.  
“I missed you,” she says and it’s no longer playful.  
“I know, I’ve been trying to figure out my life,” I say because it was true. I had been trying to figure out what I wanted to do.  
“To be twenty something,” she says.  
“Here we go with the age thing again,” I proclaim exasperated.  
“It’s not like we can hide it,” she whispers caressing the tan folders in her hands like they were the most important objects in the world, like they contained the answers to everything. Her silver silk scarf flutters and falls from one side of her neck, the office is so silent I hear the swoosh against the fabric of her black blazer. From the corner of my eye I follow the movement as it lands on the side of her skirt clad hip, the same black that covers her blouse. It ends right above the knee in a perfect hem and the pale of her skin lingers until her sharp stilettos cut the vision line and call for attention in their blood red velvet.   
“You started all of this,” I blurt.  
“And you’re ending it?” She asks.  
“Miranda, I love you, and you’re not free, and I don’t know what to do!”   
“Dine with me,” she said getting up, trying to hide with rapid vats of her lashes the tear that threatened to fall. I’m not sure why it always ends in dinner. It was as if we were living inside an old poem about France, about everything ending in dinner and wine.  
“Just steak and wine?” I offer in a weak joke.  
“The odds are higher now, aren’t they?” she smiles her mahogany lipstick parting and I nod.  
“I’ll cook,” I say.  
‘I’ll be there,” she answers.

I don’t finish my work that day, I simply leave. No one cares, it’s Friday and I have a headache.   
I sit in the kitchen table for hours, staring at the steel pot I have dusted and the pasta I have bought. I simply stare at it, wishing so many things and not a single coherent one. Finally, about an hour before eight I shower and change and put on some make up.   
I stared at the woman in the mirror. The twenty something brunette, with ruby red drugstore lipstick and a Chanel black palazzo. I stared at the thin gold cross that fell down my chest right above the crevice where my breast started. The doorbell rang, there was no time for contemplations anymore.  
She wore the same clothes she had in the morning. The same dark skirt that hugged her hips and the same silk shirt hidden by the grey scarf hanging loose just like the stray strand of hair. She looked tired and her deep blue eyes tinted dark like a storm was brewing. She smiled at me and handed me the bottle of red wine from her left hand. I recognized it from her cellar, Pinot noir, silver foil and black label.   
“Hello,” I said and she reciprocated leaning in for light hug. It felt like a breeze blowing for a second and the deep smell of Givenchy.  
She walked in the door, set her purse down on the kitchen table next to an empty glass of wine.  
“You’ve been drinking without me?” she asked but it was more of a statement said without a raise in her voice or looking for an answer.  
She proceeded to pour the remaining wine in two brand new glasses, spheres of clear that quickly bathed in the red of alcohol.   
“Here, drink with me,” she offers the glass.  
“You are awfully quiet,” she continues.  
I try I try desperately to think of something to say, to turn the conversation around but I draw a blank. A white wall without a word standing in the abyss of sand.  
“This house is nice,” she continues carrying the conversation.  
“It’s not mine,” I say.  
She sips the wine, a long sip that finished the glass like she was a sorority girl in a kappa event trying to outdrink the competition.  
She takes a deep breath and chuckles, finding a wine opener to uncork the bottle she brought.   
“That palazzo looks good on you,” She states changing the subject and smiling.  
“I like to think the person who bought it for me has good taste,” I quip back.  
She nods “that person indeed has good taste in everything.” The palazzo was a gift from her, one I had forgotten about until that night.  
She extends her hand to refill my glass of wine that now lay empty too.

We stand quiet for a what seems like an eternity, I can hear my own heartbeat, rhythmic beats… boom, boom, boom. I can sense the blood rushing on my wrist, I always place my thumb on top of it when I’m nervous, it helps me calm down. She reaches for it, my wrist and places her finger around it. I know she can feel the beat too, the pulse the drops and rises with every breath she takes. 

“Dinner is ready in the oven,” I manage to mutter under the icy blue of her gaze.  
“You never told me why you were avoiding me,” she asks.  
“I wasn’t.”  
“You said you were figuring out your life,” she states still holding on to my wrist, “figuring out your life without me.” She looks me up and down and pulls me closer. Her breath smells of red wine and alcohol, “why do you think I’m here? Why did you invite me?”  
Her second question deflates the tone of arrogance she had cultivated since her arrival and she lets go of my hands walking off into the kitchen. I wait behind, I hear the oven open and something clatter softly on the wood counter.  
“I invited you because contrary to what you may think I love you. I wish we could spend every day together, that we could be a normal couple, that you could come home every night after work to tell me how awful the new intern was, and I’d have a glass of wine for you and I could tell you how you make me happy. I invited you because I don’t want to play these games you play. I don’t want to be your friend anymore.”  
“But…” she looks up from the two plates she was setting on the table and looks at me. The light makes her glow and look younger, her hair shines disproportionately on one side, my photographer mind believes that if I were to take a picture now she’d had beautiful camera flare.  
I shrug and take out serving utensils, expertly platting pasta on two white plates. She doesn’t sit instead she perfectly rolls spaghetti noodles onto a fork and closes her eyes.  
“Does it have your approval?” I ask changing focus for a second, but I know the conversation isn’t over.  
“It’s delicious,” she compliments.  
“There is no but, Miranda. I love you, you tell me what comes next,” again I’m not sure what I mean by those words. If she were to say run away with me, would I? It’s hard to believe all these years of unprocessed conversations, of more than friendship, all these half relationships, would come to an end with a simple spaghetti dinner in London. I think it over in my mind and I can’t understand why I’m telling her I love her, has the last year just passed and not existed? I’m I not in the slightest confused by Jean and Marie? Can I really love her after all this time?  
“Why do you think I came?” she is pouring more wine into a half empty glass.  
“Because you love me too, because this affair has gotten out of hand?”  
She shakes her head.   
“I do love you, but I’m not questioning what comes next, I don’t think this has gotten out of hand. I think this is exactly where we wanted to be, at least for me. It wasn’t like we didn’t know better, like we didn’t see the signs. It wasn’t like we were all sex in a hotel room and nothing else. I shared my life with you Andrea, my thoughts, my dreams, I want you to be with me for a life time. Do you?”  
I get up and toss the napkin on the table. “You shared your life with me?”  
It’s sarcastic.  
“Don’t bullshit me Miranda, you toyed with me. You shared whatever tidbits you wanted me to know and when you thought I was too close you’d close the door. You… share … with me? What? Seeing you and Stephan gallivanting all over New York and then you would come to me at midnight and what wash away his caresses in my sheets? Do you even hear yourself?”  
“You’re right,” she says. I sit down again. Miranda admitting she’s wrong. I wish I could record this moment. “Everything you just said is right. I was a fool, but I’m here to ask you to forgive me. Not to be my friend but to come back to me.”  
Three years have passed, I’ve cried more tears than when I was a child. I’ve changed so many times that I have lost count. Still I hesitate.  
I take a bite out of the spaghetti that has been sitting mid-air, rolled in a silver fork from my the expensive collection, it has cooled as I sat aghast listening to her speech. I take a bite hoping to buy time, to in a few prolonged second of chewing I hope to attain the perfect words to answer. I take a bite and then another and then a sip of wine hoping to construct the perfect ambivalent answer to step out of the fire line. It doesn’t work, the seconds tick against my thoughts, my breath shortens with the anxiety of a big decision.  
Her next lines confirm that this is in fact the moment I have often thought about, the future I have dreaded. If she were to offer me what I say I want, a life together would I have the courage to take it or would I say I can’t.  
“I’m offering you a family Andrea, the family you always talk about, the house, the kids, the picket fence, the big fluffy dog. Do you want to marry me?”  
I take a deep breath, and finally raise my head to her, “and him?”  
That was it, that was all I could come up with. All those English classes and writing courses, and I could not come up with a better line.  
“I filed for divorce last month.”  
“Why didn’t you tell me?”  
I drink the rest of the wine in my glass and rise to get another bottle. I’ve drank a lot, I can feel the heat of the three glasses running though my blood, the subtle haze that forms around my mind is not unfamiliar but it is unwelcomed in such an important moment.   
I open the merlot blend Marie gifted me a few months ago.  
“I wasn’t going to. I was going to let you have time and space, I was going to follow that old saying that says that if you love something you should let it go,” she watches as my hand misses the glass a tiny bit before rectifying.   
“And if it comes back it was yours. I wasn’t going to call you but I can’t live without you Andrea. I was afraid you’d never come back. I couldn’t do it, I’m sorry.”  
“And you were just going to hide the fact that you’re free now?”  
“I’m not free yet,” she corrects me.  
“But you will be, and then you didn’t have faith in me. You didn’t have faith that I loved you enough to come back?” I ask agitated and yet I know she may be right. I may not have called her, not because I didn’t love her enough but because I was too fucking tired and hurt.

 

“Well, it isn’t that I don’t believe you love me. I was afraid that a few years down the road you’d convince yourself you love some mother approved guy and you would marry him and you’d never come back to me.”  
She had it, every thought that was racing through my mind, she had in an impetuous soliloquy said the exact words I could not express. I even though she had in those few words prophesized the future, and yet I acted in complete opposite to that. I don’t know if it was the wine that clouded my judgement or the last traces of unstoppable youth that led me to say she was wrong, that I would have come back to her.  
“I would have come back, sooner or later I would have. I could not live without you Miranda. I may still be afraid to face it all, but I do want to live with you, and I want to have a white picket fence and a picture-perfect story. What do we do from here?” I was now at her side, leaning against the dark wood table painted black, the flat of my stomach at her eye level, she puts her hands on the drawstrings of that black palazzo as I whisper, “mmhh my darling? What now?”  
And this time around ‘darling’ sounds just right.   
I’m not sure I was going to say something but if I was it is muted by the softness of her lips upon mine and the heat of her body momentarily oppressing mine.   
“I’m seeing some houses next week, up in the Hamptons do you want to help me pick one?”  
I push her gently away, “The Hamptons?”  
“I want to live there half time, if you will come with me of course.”  
“And my job?”  
“You can say no, Andrea. I’m no longer your boss, I won’t force you to agree,” she half smiles, “although I never thought I did. You can say you want your freedom, or your time, or you can say you don’t love me enough. I don’t want to force you into anything.”  
“It isn’t that, I just was surprised, there is so much being said over spaghetti, I’m not sure I was expecting any of it.”  
She laughs and for a second it all seems reconcilable.   
“I want to go with you, tomorrow, the next day and forever. Let’s pick out a house and just go with it.”  
She smiles and nods. It’s a sad smile not what I expected for the answer she wanted but I don’t ask. I simple kiss her back, for the first time that day tracing my hands down her pencil skirt and up her silk blouse like I had wanted to the second she walked into the office.


	11. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It struck me then that part of my misery is not having you.   
> Yes, I miss you, I miss you.   
> I dare not expatiate, because you will say I am not stark, and cannot feel the things dumb people feel.  
>  You know that is rather rotten rot, my dear.   
> After all, what is a lovely phrase?   
> One that has mopped up as much truth as it can hold?"

Life is the most interesting of experiences. It is filled with ups and downs, tears, loss, laughter, sorrow, happiness. It is as Helen Keller would say, “an adventure, a grand adventure or nothing at all.” I had no expectations coming back to New York and yet I had all the expectations in the world. There had been so much I had lived in a short span of three years that I wondered if I could ever top it, and if I wanted to?  
Coming to New York meant changing once again, my lifestyle, my freedom, my privacy. Coming to New York meant I was no longer playing pretend journalism, watching the sun rise with vodka and living a life that did not belong to me. Coming to New York meant I had to grow up, face my parents, be a mother to the twins, decide if I wanted to stay at Conde Nast, and more than anything be the person Miranda fell in love with. I wasn’t sure that I was ready for all of it, or any of it. If Miranda had asked me during the affair to stay with her forever I would have, if she had asked when she asked me to leave Donovan I would have, if she had asked the night of Nigel’s party, if she along with a luxury high rise had given me a promise of love I would have had no questions. I didn’t know any other way to love but her, she had surpassed Nate and I often wondered if I had really loved Nate or if he was just a byproduct of New York. Now, however, after London, after Marie and having an affixed peace I didn’t know if I could live with the burning passion I had for Miranda. I didn’t know if this type of all-consuming love would last. When she had asked if I would marry her, my heart skipped a beat. She loved me. She loved me enough to marry me. The following morning when she left, with the promise that she’d pick me up in three days for JFK, my subconscious reminded me that I would not be her first marriage. I remembered that there had been other three before me, that at some point she had also loved them, or at least felt enough to agree to share her life. What if I was just one more? The affair turned marriage that would fizzle out in a few years? I was plagued with questions and what if’s. I was plagued with them and no time for answers. I would ask Miranda, I would ask her soon. I would ask before I found myself loving her even more.  
Marie came back that weekend and before I could ask Miranda anything I had to figure out how to tell Marie I was not just leaving London. I was leaving her and I was leaving her for the same person I had come running away from.

“Ma petite,” she said as she would often call me, her smile was painted in bright pink Dior, she is wearing tight jeans paired with a flower shirt.  
“Marie,” I said and I stopped as I was handed a glass of wine from the new bottle in her hands.  
“So… that saying you Americans have about not going back to an old lover… what is it?” She asks.  
I sip the wine and try to think of what the phrase is but she’s not expecting an answer.  
“I always forget how it goes, something about leaving old …” she pauses her French accent ever so present, “old flame? in the ashes? Well anyway,” she waves her hand up and down. It’s not as poignant or elegant as when Miranda does it but it gets the point across.  
“You don’t abide by it I guess?” she says and smiles.  
“What do you mean?” I ask my voice finally emerging as I look around the vacant room to a few pictures of my time in London. There was a large black and white one of myself near London Bridge done by one of the photographers at the magazine as a favor. There was two paparazzi shots of Cannes, one is her and I, she’s resting her hand on my shoulder leaning in to say something, perfectly poised. A shot you’d see on a magazine spread. I remember that night perfectly, I’m looking at her, laughing.  
“You know what it means, you’re going back to her, non?”  
I nod, I nod rapidly and instinctively being drawn out of my flashback.  
“C’est la vie,” she says shrugging.  
“Marie, I’m so sorry,” I offer rapidly not sure why I was apologizing.  
Her large eyes turn to look at me, they are sincere, they show no malice or anger, simply a solid nostalgia. There is a faint smile underlining them and she shakes her head slightly.  
“Pas … don’t be. C’est pas importante. I just want to know you’re sure?”  
I don’t answer.  
“Are you my darling? Are you sure of her?”  
I’m not, but I nod.  
“I am.”  
“Good, then. I’m glad I brought both Petit Verdot and Champagne!”  
We drink both bottles that night, we order take out and she calls a few friends to come for brunch the following day. They come, Luke and Emilia and Lily and Helena come, I meet Jean’s new girlfriend and it gives me a sense that Marie will be fine. That I was transitory, that everyone for the two siblings is transitory. The morning is filled with cocktails, sunlight patio restaurants, farewell gifts and eloquent goodbyes. After the usual gang is gone, Marie drives me home. She gets out of the car as we reach my soon to be ex-apartment and we stand in the street for a few pulsing moments. If you stand still enough you can hear the ticking of Big Ben, one, two, three.  
“I guess this is goodbye?” I say.  
She doesn’t answer, instead she shrugs again and opens her arms, I fit inside as I wrap mine around her. I wrap them around her petite frame, her dark curls crash against my chin, I am filled with soft notes of jasmine and alcohol. We hug for even a longer time than we looked at each other, her press on my back is soft and firm, like she’s ready to let go but doesn’t want to. I can feel her breath getting rapid and out of synchrony and I know that she’s upset.  
“Je t’aime,” she says as her hold releases and her hands cup mine for a single moment. She tries to look away but a faint smile and teary eyes betray her. She shrugs again it’s her signature move. I want to say it back, but all I can think of is Miranda and that damn black power suit with the grey scarf. Marie drives away without more words but a business card pressed to my hand. It’s hers and I find it odd since I know all her phone numbers, when I turn it over she’s handwritten a note.  
“If you ever need a job or a friend in France,” that is all it says and I shove it in my wallet. 

It turns out Miranda doesn’t pick me up at JFK, instead she sends Roy and a bouquet of flowers. The flowers don’t hug me back and I’m annoyed already. She’s instructed Roy to take me to my apartment if I want to freshen up, or I can do so at the townhome.  
I choose the apartment. I tell Roy to come back in two hours, it’s right after four in the afternoon when we arrive at the empty apartment. He nods but instead of going somewhere parks. The concierge still recognizes me, “Ms. Sachs!” she exclaims.  
“Jimmy!” I say back. He carries my suitcase and informs me that a few boxes have arrived during the week and that they are safely stored away for me.  
I thank him, hand him a few bills and close the door. It’s dark and I don’t’ bother turning the light on, I sit in the old familiar sofa, with the white sheets and breathe. 

I’m home.

Home feels safe, and comfortable and after about 40 minutes of sitting in the dark, I dial Roy and tell him that I’m very tired and I won’t be going to the townhouse today.  
He answers that Miranda had planned for that too, ‘of course she had’ I think.  
He hands my concierge a small jewelry box, it’s a simple Hermes key chain with a single key attached to it. The key to the townhouse. In Miranda’s perfect cursive it says,  
“For when you’re ready to call this your home.”  
It makes me smile, and I place it gently next to the coffee table, that’s when I see it the gift the twins had gotten me before I left for London. It seemed like such a long time ago. The teal box, laying there, forgotten. I pick it up. I pick it up cautiously because it brings back a flood of memories. I remember the girls yelling that they hated me, their words about Miranda’s behavior and my lack of caring. I peel the tape that seals both ends of the box as I try to calm my panicked worry about Miranda drinking. Is she still drinking? I wonder and I worry. Part of my worry is self-centered do I want to walk into an addiction? The other part is not, it worries about her and about the twins and it fills me with guilt.  
It’s a passport cover, a beautiful passport cover with my name engraved on it. The guilt compounds in my head, it pulses through my body, I had left two beautiful, broken girls walk out and refused to help them. What kind of mother could I be? Did they even want me back in their lives?  
The phone rings,  
“Andrea?” the voice on the other end was both recognizable and expected.  
“Miranda,” I say.  
“Is everything all right? The girls and I were expecting you for dinner?”  
“I was tired,” I say.  
“I know darling, those flights are grueling, we won’t push. Caroline felt guilty for breaking her arm this morning and keeping me from picking you up,” her voice is filled with urgency and concern as if trying to convince me to believe her.  
More guilt trickles down into my heavy load.  
“Roy, didn’t mention,” I say.  
“I told him not to worry you,” she explains. I can almost picture her, arms wrapped around her body, leaning against the mahogany desk in her home office, beautiful blue eyes looking out onto the city.  
“I’m sorry,” I say and my tones match the darkness that still plagued my apartment.  
“Don’t be darling, the twins know you were tired and I understand. Will you come tomorrow? We can go over to you?” Her words sink in slowly into my tired brain. She can come over to me, Miranda Priestly, the Dragon Lady and her off-springs can come meet me. The severity and gravity of what just been said impacts me. The complete tilt of power, the power that love can imbalance overcomes me.  
“I’ll call you? I have to start cleaning the apartment, but yes one or the other works,” I say.  
“I have movers coming over to your house to re-organize and clean, also a decorator … Leigh Ann, she’s amazing. If you want to re-decorate. You don’t have to.”  
“I will call you to schedule it all tomorrow, “I say firmly feeling overwhelmed by it all. In London, I had never felt pressed to decorate a certain way, or behave a certain form, or be anything. Perhaps that had been the most intoxicating thing. Here I was suddenly Andrea. I hang up the phone after she states that she loves me and I realize I have to call my parents.  
I tell myself I will do it tomorrow. I tell myself that I have to order something to eat. It is past eight in the evening when the pizza finally arrives.  
I eat it right of the box, I don’t want to wash any dishes. I don’t want to get up and get a plate. I slide down to the floor, the fluffy beige carpet. My shirt pulls up as my back slides into the sofa and I watch my breast heave in and out, up and down as I chew the morsels of bread and meat.  
I fall asleep in my black leggings and long black tunic. It could pass as sleepwear, my hair is slightly greasy, the long hours in a plane cabin cause that, I’m sweaty and bloated. My eyes close. The phone rings again. It isn’t Miranda, it’s Georgina.  
“I wanted to see if you had arrived on time,” she says. I can almost hear the sleep in her voice, it’s 7am in London.  
“You can tell her I’m fine,” I say.  
“Tell who?”  
“Marie, tell her I am safe, and I’m home and she’s welcome to come see me anytime.”  
Georgina laughs, “you’re good.”  
“I’m a reporter, it’s my job to know people,” I say.  
“I will tell her that, goodbye Andrea Sachs,” she says.  
“Wait!” I yell onto the phone.  
She waits, there is a pause filled with the awkward phone silence.  
“Don’t tell her anything. Don’t tell her I know. Just tell her you called me and I was fine. I have to go,” I say.  
“Is she there?”  
“Yes,” I lie.

I fall asleep after I hang up. When I wake up the sun is barely peaking down onto the sliver of open widow. I look at my almost dying phone. It is before 6:00 in the morning.  
Something in me pushes me to jump up, search through my suitcase, shower, put on a red dress with black ballet flats and straighten my hair. I get a cab, a cab will be faster than if I attempt to drive. I am right. We flash through the city, I see the skyscrapers in the distance, the one -way streets and the hanging street lights that are falling apart and pending on heavens good graces not to fall apart. I see the beaten-up signs for pizza and Chinese food. I had missed all of it so much, it was a breath of fresh air to be here, in the grimy streets, in the dark embossed alleys, in the graffiti infested walls. I want to cry, I want to cry the very instant that I find myself on the porch of her townhouse. The key weights so much in my hand, it is suddenly very heavy and all my interval weight training seems to have been in vain. There are six perfect steps in the staircase, there are two steps to the door knob, three clicks from the key, one turn of the knob. I resist the urge to call out for her, instead I walk toward the kitchen. It’s silent, dimly lit. Faint laughter comes out from the studio, the door is slightly ajar.  
“Come on Miranda, add one more day!” the unknown voice filters through.  
The unmistakable laughter from Miranda fills the room and is joined by the second person.  
“I will think about it Jane, I think four days of you tiring me out is good for now,” Miranda says and the voice laughs again.  
I feel confused for a moment, “Miranda, Pilates is tough workout, but you’ve gotten so much better.” The door opens when a young, thin brunette comes out, workout uniform and a few resistance loops on her hand.  
Miranda is leaning against a chair, “Andrea?”  
There is a towel in her hand, she’s covered in a slight layer of sweat.  
“Hello,” Jane murmurs.  
At least I think her name is Jane. “Hello,” I answer.  
She turns and waves at Miranda, Miranda waves back.  
“I didn’t expect you so early,” she explains. The trainer has left, the door slides as soon as I release it. It creeks just slightly.  
“I wanted to see you,” I say. I did. I wanted to see her. I had felt this urgent need to see her, to hold her, to tell her I needed her. I wanted to hear her say she loved me. Now that I had her right in front, slightly disarrayed and wearing black Calvin Klein yoga pants and a matching workout shirt I wanted nothing else than to kiss her.  
I approach her determined and she backs away slightly. “Andrea, I’m all sweaty, let me go change,” she makes an attempt to walk past me toward the door but I don’t let her. I grab her wrists, I pull her in. I hug her tightly, I hug her without indication of letting go, long enough so that she gives up and hugs me back.  
“I want you sweaty, and not sweaty,” I say. She laughs, she laughs at my words and my hug and the way I’m not letting go.  
“Andrea, I’m going to ruin your dress.”  
“I love you Miranda, I just want you to know that,” I say.  
“I know,” she answers still laughing and hugging me back.  
Suddenly it all makes some sense. It was there in that moment, holding a sweaty, slightly less glamorous Miranda that I stopped feeling insecure. We were meant to be, I was sure of it. Even if I was only sure for these few moments, I was sure. And it was there in her arms, after 12 hour flights and lack of sleep that I realized I was still madly in love with her, and I would follow her anywhere, into the Hamptons, into the houses she wants go see tomorrow, into marriage, into divorce, into eternity.

Miranda stirs and nods, “I love you.” Her words fall right into my ear and it sends shivers down my spine. She’s going to change my life again I know it, just like I will change hers. I don’t know where it will take us, if it will last or fall apart but I know I will be lucky enough to see everything she’s thinking first hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been awfully one sided, don't you want to know what Miranda is thinking?  
> I have decided the rest of the story ~ PART TWO will be in Miranda's voice, from her point of view. Are you ready for the ride? Come along, still a lot left for our leading ladies.


	12. PART 2: Andrea

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like walking the world  
> Like walking the world  
> You can hear she's a beautiful girl  
> She's a beautiful girl  
> She fills up every corner like she's born in black and white  
> Makes you feel warmer when you're trying to remember  
> What you heard  
> She likes to leave you hanging on a wire

If I was honest I’d have to admit Andrea had been a distraction, a power play, a revenge move on Stephan’s many one night stands. I can’t say she was to blame for kissing me, I can’t say I didn’t have a plan when I invited her to my suite. I can’t say that I didn’t give her wine without an expectation … an expectation that she met. She was supposed to be easy and fast and dripping with lust. If I were honest I’d have to say that all I wanted that night was to forget about the saved divorce and take the taffeta fabric of her body. I wanted nothing more than to run my fingers through the luxe of her locks, to pull her close and feel the warmth of her breath. Then when we woke up, when her pools of brown looked onto mine, when she sat next to me without permission, when that one night turned into two and three and four it wasn’t just lust. It was quite a surprise to come to that realization. I had kept making excuses as to why I could not fire her, then I stopped making excuses and I simply let her exist within my life.  
There had been something that I could not pinpoint about her, about her naiveté, about the way she didn’t care who I was, or what I stood for. I was attracted to the way she wanted to please me, simply because it was in her nature to excel. I was drawn to her probably long before Paris. I was drawn to her witty comments, her gradual change of style, her affinity to read classic novels and to ask questions. The nights turned into dinners and then I let her in my home, into my childhood, my past and present. The one night stand that I could not fire turned into a constant, a routine, a breath of fresh air and suddenly months into the affair I realized that she wasn’t just a fling. I realized that I probably did not love her yet, but I needed her, I longed for her, I cared for her. At that moment, I was filled with doubts, dark, treacherous doubts that consumed my nights. She wasn’t a fling to me, but what was I to her? In Maine, she refused to talk about what our relationship meant. She had effectively evaded my comments and though she wore the necklace we never talked about it. Was I simply a girl crush? Was I someone she could use later? Was it just the simple satisfaction of knowing that she had attained, the unattainable, the impossible boss, the fashion powerhouse who could make or break careers, the Ice Queen? Even if she genuinely cared, the truth is I was too old for her, too complicated for her, too much weight for her. She was a sailboat and I was an anchor, and I was sure she’d leave soon.  
I had seen the same pattern repeat over and over in every affair. I had seen it from executives, to designers to socialite wives. The typical older man cheating with an escort, or a fan, or a trivial secretary. Then there were the payback wives who took on lovers to fill the void of their failed marriages. Those affairs always ended in silence and paychecks. Was that what Andrea was to me?  
I began to not distinguish as the weeks turned into months, the months into seasons. There were no straight lines in the sand anymore, they were blurred as I began to murmur that I loved her.  
There was, I determined, only two options. I could keep her for as long as the affair would last. I could risk it, for the pure pleasure of having her be mine. I could ask and something told me she would stay. Even though hurt often flashed through her eyes when Stephan came to grudgingly take me to dinner, or when he wrapped his arms around me at a function. I could ask her to stay even though I could see the amount of self-control was painful to not hold my hand to not say what she was thinking. I could ask her to stay in the shadows, in the secrecy of being the other woman. I couldn’t keep her I determined because … dare I say I loved her? Love as cliché as it sounds only wants happiness for their beloved. The other option was to put the affair into broad day light, to divorce Stephan, to ask Andrea to move in with me, to make us real. The problem with that was that I wasn’t sure that was what she wanted. She had never asked me to leave my husband, she had never expressed interest in living with me, or having to deal with all that would come out of such a change. I wasn’t sure if she was ready to take on all that came attached to me. And I didn’t want to ask. It wasn’t a simple declaration of love, I wasn’t 20. If I took that risk it would mean she would not only have me, but she’d inherit the twins by default, she’d inherit their father and two ex-husbands. She would have to deal with lack of privacy and whatever else came along with it. If it wasn’t what she wanted, I’d be left with nothing. If it turned out I was simply a fancy affair I’d have put the twins through one more failed relationship. The stakes were often too high for happiness.  
I could leave her. That was the unspoken option. I could leave. I could walk out of … this… whatever this was. When I thought about how I used to be disgusted by cheating and lying, I felt disgusted at myself. I had done it not once but twice. Back then I had justified it with ‘it was too much alcohol’. I had never seen her again, I don’t even remember her name. Today I had no justification, against my better judgment I had fallen in love with Andrea. Perhaps it was that disgust in myself that led me to let what I was thinking slip into loud words about an actor who was having a relationship with a much younger protégé. I knew as soon as I heard them that I would never be able to reel them in. I knew as soon as she looked up at me from the laptop in her hands that she had understood them just as I had been thinking them. On my left with a barely perceivable raising of his eyebrows I knew Nigel had seen it too. If Jocelyn hadn’t come in, if she had not interrupted perhaps I would have connoted an explanation for both of them. I could see the pain and confusion splashed over her beautiful features and if she hadn’t tripped over herself to answer my command for someone to get Lagerfeld on the phone, if she hadn’t rushed out of the office like we were on fire I would have reached across and apologized. If, if, if, too many ifs and no solutions. But she said, “I got it,” before we all could take a breath, and she rushed out. Before I could understand what had just happened she had Karl on the phone.  
I sat down and picked up the phone, Jocelyn and Nigel filed out like attendees at a funeral. I picked up the phone and pretended I liked Karl Lagerfeld, an odious, conceited, and far too pretentious man. In reality when he was named head of the Chanel empire, I though Coco Chanel herself turned over in her grave. Nevertheless, after 40 tedious minutes of talking in French and English I had convinced him to only take out two gowns from the collection.  
“I think you are genius, ma Cherie,” I had told him.  
“C’est” vrai?” he had said, high pitched tone which indicated he wanted more, more praise, more assurances, more bowing down to his abilities.  
I had spoon fed him everything he wanted, I was a pro. And when the call was over, I had called Emily because now it was too late to call Andrea, and it was not the place.  
The place for what? I wasn’t sure. The place to apologize? The place to admit over expensive glass desks that I loved her?  
I meant to call her, call her and tell her it was a mistake. I had meant to do it after dinner, dinner where I sat and picked at my food.  
“Miranda are you listening to me?” Stephan had said multiple times.  
“Yes,” I had said. His stories where always the same, the same egocentric propaganda.  
“If you didn’t want to come out, you could have told me,” he said a little irritated when he had to ask a second time.  
I looked up, “I didn’t want to cancel.”  
“You were the one that wanted dinner, before my trip to Olso!”  
I paused, I remembered asking him for dinner. I was always asking him to dinner. It made me feel like I was trying to reconcile, something that was broken.  
“You haven’t even touched your dinner, you’ve cut lines into your steak,” he says annoyed.  
The waiter comes with a second martini.  
“I’m sorry, I had a bad day at work,” I lied.  
“Oh no, did someone confuse cerulean and blue again?” he jokes sarcastically.  
That’s right, I could never talk to him about work, for him fashion was just as useless as porcelain flower vases.  
I meant to call her when we got home, but then the twins asked about my day and why I was never home anymore. I meant to call her after that but the weight of the day had been too much, and so I poured a drink and another one, and one more. Macallan was my drink of choice 12 year, because it wasn’t as strong as a 20 - year age, it was smooth, middle of the road, it had been through years but it wasn’t at the end. I didn’t call her, and perhaps that was what I had meant to do all along.

Instead I had been handed an opportunity to make it right for her. She came in asking for a transfer. She came in as I understood it, to get away from me and I could do nothing more than grant it. I could have apologized then, I could have sent flowers to her home, I could have pleaded. If I was honest I would say that’s what I wanted. I wanted to plead, but Miranda Priestly doesn’t plea. She doesn’t accept that she has created a fucking mess for herself, she doesn’t force anyone to stay.  
So, I pick up the phone and call Arlene.

“Miranda! What a surprise! It’s been so long!” she says. Arlene’s personality is my opposite, bubbling, caring and flamboyant. She makes you feel like you should tell her all your life within the first drink. I actually did, many years ago when we were both idealist women working at Harpers Bazar. Arlene had been my confidant, she had been my only best friend. She had been there when the twins were born, and when my first divorce hit the tabloids. When I was handed the editorship to Runway, I had to fight every day to prove I was better than the panel of men I sat with, my life fell apart and I no longer could stand her attitude. I no longer believed that ‘everything would be fine’. I no longer believed in the goodness of people and so we became mere acquaintances.

“Since the New Hampshire School fundraiser,” I remind her.  
“Yes, since then, you had the girls with you, they are so tall now,” she comments. It’s typical of her, small talk.  
“They are,” I accept.  
“I still think they look exactly like you, you when you had that fiery hair at Harpers,” she says.  
“that was such a long time ago,” I comment wanting to get on with the conversation.  
“I would love to catch up, Miranda but I sense this is not that type of call?”  
“No, it isn’t,” I say avoiding her invitation to catch up.  
“Are you still looking for a new Assistant Editor?” I ask  
“Yes, I am. The others recommended by the board, they are good but I don’t know I’m looking for something different”  
“I have a recommendation for you, I would love for you to consider her,” I say.  
“Do I know her?” she asks.  
“No, I don’t think so. She doesn’t have a lot of experience, but I’ve read her work samples, she’s talented. She has excellent work ethic, she’s smart and bold and has amazing ideas. I think you should at least look at her work. I would definitely hire her for Runway.”  
There is a dead pause at the other end of the line, “wow Miranda who is this person who has earned so much praise from you? I didn’t think I’d ever see the day when someone won your praise. Not even I could earn a good comment from you back in the day,” she says joking. Yes, there was that. I had told the board at Elias Clark that I would not put my hands in the fire for her. I bite my lip.  
She laughs, “Don’t worry Miranda I won’t let that affect my decision. Send over her samples, what’s her name?”  
“Andrea,” I murmur and my heart aches just to say it out loud.  
She calls within an hour, I didn’t expect her to read them right away. I didn’t expect her to agree so quickly.  
“If she has earned such high esteem from you, I believe she will be fine,” Arlene says, “besides what are old friends for? Right? But to help us.”  
I nod and I agree to call HR to handle the transfer, the salary, the tedious formalities.  
I sit there for a few minutes, back turned toward the door, staring at the bustling city before me. She won’t have to see me anymore. I don’t usually do it, I hate when people do it, but I can’t help it. I cry, because I have been a fool. 

The flood of memories is expected, they come back when our life is about to change forever. Like the true and tried anecdote about our life flashing before our eyes as we die, just like that the last three years flash before me as Andrea interrupts my morning workout, and murmurs as we stand there, she in street clothes, me in sweat covered Calvin Klein and no makeup; that she loves me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder: This is Miranda's POV. Though the story picks up at the same place, there will be flashbacks. :)


	13. Belief

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   
>  Tumble with me  
>  Because you can  
>  Tumble in the darkness of the forest   
>  That is my mind  
>  Tumble with me in the warmth of my sheets  
>  While you try to find  
>  The crevice of my body in which to lay you heart
> 
> Come follow me   
>  Follow in the abyss of my soul  
>  Touch me  
>  Hold my waist and never let go  
>  Follow me in the crooked paths of my life  
>  And always engulf me in you arms at night

I didn’t know what to expect when I flew out to get her back. So much time and so many events had transcribed in those two years after we ended the affair. We had been ex-lovers, wayward friends, best friends, star-crossed lovers and forgotten acquaintances.   
Initially I had thought that not seeing her would be the end all of my feelings for her. I had hoped that the good deed of helping her in her career would right the wrongs I had committed with her. I was wrong. I found that the dinners with Stephan were still dull and complacent.   
“Miranda are you listening to me?” was still the phrase that would describe those dinners at Gramercy Tavern, those six words were perhaps all the Danny the waiter would ever hear. In his mind I was probably a cold, frigid bitch.  
Vodka Martinis were still the only pleasure I got out of those two hours spent with my husband, and after enough nods and pertinent questions Stephan would give up and our drive home would be in silence.   
The new Andrea was just like every other assistant had been before her, tall and thin and gorgeous. She had long blond hair and blue eyes that rivaled my own. She knew the biographies of major designers like the story of America, and she could tell the difference between stiches and fabrics. She was efficient enough, had read Runway since she understood the alphabet and idolized me. The new Andrea never brought me warm coffee, she never got lost en-route to Hermes, she didn’t need help from Nigel to dress or to spell Gabbana. The new Andrea was just perfect for the magazine and she made me think of Andrea every morning when I’d throw my coat and purse on her desk. I would pause a moment longer than necessary and remember Andrea’s reactions when she was my assistant.   
I found myself making more excuses than necessary to not be home, to avoid being in the same room with Stephan, and I found it increasingly hard to not refute his affairs mid dinner.   
Instead I would schedule dinners with anyone that needed dinning out with, more than dine I would go for the whiskey sours and the glasses of Bordeaux. When I was home, I found the clouded judgment and the fog of alcohol made the long hours bearable and the ache of loneliness would often disappear. I was aware that the additional calories of alcohol would offset the image I had maintain, I would work out longer and eat less. If it was harmful, who cared? The mirror showed the same thin figure I needed, the Chanel dresses still fit and page six would not report I had gained weight.   
Perhaps sometimes I consumed more than was socially acceptable, but it was always at home. 

“Mom!” Caroline would often wake me up from the den, “it’ s past 2 am aren’t you going to sleep?”  
Of course, I would feel guilt, guilt that instead of spending time with the two beings I loved the most, I was finishing off bottles over the book in the den.   
Those nights I would nod and make my way, albeit swaying up my room only to wake up three or four hours later and cover the dark circles with extra-strength concealer, the headache with pills and the confusion that often lingered still with shades.  
I would like to say that no one knew, but they did. Emily knew, she’d schedule my appointments later, and my coffees always seemed stronger. She knew and so did Nigel, he knew and it was him who I invited out to dinner one random Friday.

“Nigel, I needed someone to talk to. This conversation never leaves this table, if it ever does,” I start as we sit over paper lantern tables and red napkins.  
“I’m fired, black-listed and probably dead behind an alley… don’t worry,” he smiles.  
Nigel is the closest thing I have to a friend, after Arlene I didn’t bother making friends. The fashion world is brutal, you make it or you die. We network, and we depend on each other, we socialize, we laugh, we tell our stories but we don’t ever completely trust.   
“Before you say anything, Miranda …” he pauses and I think he’s going to tell me he doesn’t want to know. Instead he looks at me and then casts his eyes down to the arugula salad dressed in pungent vinaigrette before him, “I know.”  
I look at my own plate, the wedge salad that I would not eat, because there was a glass of sake next to me. I reach for it, he reaches out and presses my own hand down.   
I defensively look across the table, how dare he? I am about to say those same words to him, but the look in his eyes is genuine and concerned and he shakes his head, “don’t.”  
I swallow the venom filled words that are about to shoot across the table. I swallow them with water and bite my lips to try and think of what he knows.  
“You know …?”  
“I know you enough…Andrea…she loves you.”   
Nigel was never one to hold back words, he was never afraid to speak his thoughts. It would seem speaking about my life held the same rules. I swallow hard again and think of what to say.   
“How do you know?”  
“I know Miranda, the way she spoke of you, the look of longing every time you were in the room, the look of angst and anger when your husband comes, she loves you and when you said …”  
“Those fucking words in the office?” I interrupt.  
He nods, “she loves you, but you are dangerous to her.”  
I scoff, “she could have …”  
He shakes his head before I finish the sentence, before I do what I’m good at, assign blame to someone else for my lack of communication.  
“She’s a strong lady but not as strong as you, remember she’s young and vulnerable. She is an idealist, and self-preservation made her flee before your fire consumes her. She was like a moth to fire, and you hurt her.”  
I nod. I look up at elaborate designs on the ceiling, geisha paintings in koi colors. Cesious, cerulean and celeste sway in waves around peach and salmon colored gowns. I mostly look up to try and hold the tears that are menacing to fall.   
“How do I fix it?” I ask. I didn’t mean to ask that, actually I’m not sure what I meant to say. I was looking for validation with Nigel instead I was asking for advice.   
“Why don’t you ask her to be friends, why don’t you get to know the real her, the Andrea below whatever hidden affair you two had,” his eyes dart nervously at me over what he has just said. He is crossing the line of privacy and I am known for shielding my life from everyone. I can’t be mad at him, after all I invited him to dine. I wanted his honest conversation and that was what he has given me.  
“Did she say she loved me?” I ask.  
He shrugs, “that’s not my truth to tell.”  
I respect his answer. He clarifies, “just like I would never say what you’ve told me here today, not even to her.”  
“I understand,” I say.  
We take a few final bites of the entrée, I take a final look at the untouched sake on the table.  
“Friendship will be good Miranda, you can let her be and still have her be part of your life. It will be good for both of you. And if …”  
I raise my hand, “nothing more than friendship can ever happen between us.”

I had mulled over Nigel’s words, friendship could not possibly be enough. I wasn’t going to call her one day out of the blue and ask if she wanted to be my friend. I wasn’t going to do it but then I see her at the hotel’s bar, the one I never frequented but Stephan had insisted we try a different restaurant. I saw her there with some woman drinking and laughing, I see her and think, “perhaps fate had other plans.”  
Getting her to agree to dinner had been easy and we had bypassed the awkwardness fairly easy, we fell into a routine again except this time it was a genuine friendly bond. I had thought that Nigel was crazy for suggesting a friendship, but I had been wrong again.   
Andrea became a part of my life, I opened up my heart and my family to her because it seemed I had nothing more to fear. She started a different relationship with a bright young man, she even managed to get Stephan to like her. I was able to pat down my feelings of desire for her and knowing I would see her every Friday, or every Saturday when she picked up the twins was enough to where I didn’t need to drink as often.   
I knew that it was a dangerous balance, a co-dependent friendship but I would cross that bridge when it was necessary.  
Caroline and Cassidy took an unexpected affinity to her. She wasn’t their age but they found this young woman who’d come in after dinners dressed in long black dresses and Prada flats, who would pull her hair up in a whirl without a second thought and have conversations with them, or help them glue glitter to their projects in said clothes, enchanting. They started asking for her to take them to dance class and take them she would; she’d come in every Saturday morning, after we’ve had late dinners and whisk them away. She would email back and forth pleasing them in small actions that I often did not have the time to do. She’d match outfits with them, jeans and red shirts and glitter headbands. I couldn’t help but laugh. She’d always bring me coffee on Saturdays, and she’d take the girls out for secret ice cream. I wasn’t sure if they saw her like the aunt they lacked, the big sister they didn’t have or a pseudo mother. It wasn’t that Stephan wasn’t good to them, in fact he was better to them than their own father. He took them to the movies, he’d let them comb glitter through his hair when they were younger, he sided with them so I would let them take soccer camp, he had been a good man. It wasn’t that they didn’t love him, it was that Andrea connected with them. She understood them, she set the time to care about them, more than I did perhaps. I watched them saunter off every weekend and I always wanted to run out after them. I wanted to go to dance lessons with Andrea, to sit in the tiny bleachers parents were allowed to sit in and rest my head on her shoulder. I wanted to then stroll Central Park, holding Patricia with her … with my Andrea. The thoughts were constant and recurring. I had to remind myself that she wasn’t mine, she was this new young man’s … Donovan. That was the thing about our friendship that try as I may, there were moments when I still thought of her as mine, my lover, my heart, my girl. 

“Leave him,” I asked of her after having seen them together at my annual summer gathering. It was the first time I had actually seen them together, they looked good together. He was tall and broad and quiet. He hoovered about her all night; yet, he seemed educated, elegant and held his own at every approached conversation. 

“This what I wanted when I left her,” I had to remind myself.   
She seemed content with him, dare I even say happy. Across the room I heard Cassidy and Caroline constantly laughing with him, he was good with them. Andrea and Donovan entertained the twins all night. Perhaps she didn’t have the passionate lust in her eyes when she looked at him; but she seemed to care for him.   
“A good friend would support her new-found peace, this is what I want for her. I want her to have a good career, and a good man to love, perhaps a family,” I told myself again as I ordered another whiskey from the bar.  
“Miranda, I think you’ve had enough to drink,” Stephan came and interrupted my concentration.   
“No, I haven’t,” I say to him.  
I can still see her and him and Nigel joining in. Nigel likes him, he knows that his man, this Donovan is the man she deserves. He is good for her. I can’t stand the thought of her having a family with him, marrying him.  
“Don’t give her that drink,” Stephan tells the cocktail server.   
“Who do you think you are to decide for me?” I don’t mean to say it but I do.  
“Your husband,” he answers quietly, “maybe if you stop staring across the room at Andrea and at least walk over to her, maybe if you have the guts to tell her what we all know, you won’t need to get wasted.”  
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, why don’t you just leave?” I yell at him, snatching my arm away from his bony hands and taking the drink that had been left on the ledge.  
It’s louder that it was supposed to, heads turn and everyone who’s a few feet away listens.   
He leaves without further ado, “fuck Miranda, grow up.”   
I don’t care about him that night, I watch him walk away and all I want to do is walk over to Andrea and hold her. 

It was that image of her with Donovan that prompted me to ask her. I don’t think she will do it, but she does. She leaves him. She leaves him without a single word, without a fight, without a need for explanations from me. I don’t know why she does it, I don’t know why she is my friend. My only guess is that she loves me. 

After what seemed like an eternity, Andrea lets go and hands me the water bottle that was lying by the studio couch.   
“Sorry, I didn’t come last night, it was kind of too much, seeing the apartment again,” she says sitting on the ledge of the same couch.   
“You don’t have to explain a single thing, the past is just that, the past.”  
She nods. I want nothing more than to have her stay today, have her move in with me, have us try and play catch up with the lost time.  
“How long will the divorce take?” she asks.  
“Well, he signed all the papers, the lawyers are hoping for a little under three months.”  
“Do we have to keep this a secret until then?” she asks.   
The conversation has suddenly turned very serious, “I think I owe you dinner, why don’t I take you out tonight?”   
“You don’t owe me dinner Miranda, if anything you owe me an explanation,” she looks up at me. I drink the rest of the water bottle.   
In London, I had thought that it would be hard to attain her forgiveness. I was prepared to pull out all the stops, to win her heart, to make her fall in love with me… again. I was prepared to do it the way it should have been, to ask her out to dinners, and give her flowers and more importantly respect. I wanted her to know that she meant the world to me. That the only reason I had left was to give her a chance to be happy without me. And the only reason I had wanted her to leave was because I had panicked, when my own daughter was asking her to stay forever. I had realized I couldn’t ask that of her, she had to go and find out who she was, have other loves and be happy without me. I had only asked her to leave because I didn’t want her to break my heart again, if she didn’t want to stay forever. Was it selfish? Perhaps.  
Yet, I had done it genuinely, for both of us. I had done it with the true intent of staying away. Then somewhere between Jean and Marie, I had felt like Rhett Buttler must have felt watching Scarlet bounce from one beau to another.   
“An explanation?” I ask not knowing what for precisely, there was so much explaining to do.  
“You’re right, maybe I should at least let you get changed,” she smiles.  
“I’ll be back then, do you want anything to eat? Breakfast?” I say, it all suddenly sounds so trivial and we are dancing around so much more.  
“I know my way around the kitchen,” she says again so freely that I could almost forget all that was at stake.  
I let her get up and I walk toward the staircase, “Miranda?” she calls out after me.  
I turn around and though I don’t see it, I feel that the same whimsical smile from London play on my lips.  
“Whatever we talk about, whatever the divorce is I want you to know I love you, I want to make us work,” she says and I believe her.  
I believe her because I have to. I can’t do this always doubting, always guessing. In London, in her West End rental, I had been prepared for a long process of begging for forgiveness.  
Instead I was met with a few angry speeches and acceptance. What I thought would be a long making up for all the ways I had hurt her, for telling her to leave, was solved over a single night. It all culminated in her promise of looking at houses with me, all over spaghetti and wine. I should have been static, instead I was filled with questions. I wasn’t sure if it was because she loved me and love always forgives, or she was ready to come home and home in a way meant me. I didn’t know if she wanted to come back to me for routine, or safety or love. The doubt killed me.   
I nodded as I walked up the stairs. I would have to believe her. That would have to suffice.

By dinner my mood lightened up, I had Emily make reservations at Per Se. The night was quiet, the restaurant wasn’t bustling with noise and the waiter was quick to bring the wine.   
It was going smoothly, I was trying to think of what I would have to explain, what I would have to answer, would I have the courage to ask point blank if she loved me? Why was I doubting it?

“I love you,” she says and it’s as if she read my mind.  
Across the way an older couple is sitting a few feet away, they turn slightly to look at us. I would have to get used to this. We don’t fit their stereotypes, neither of us has a buzz cut, or is wearing baggy jeans and suit top. Andrea has decided to cut her hair down to her shoulder and it lays straight edged against a maroon dress that falls down to the edge of her black stilettos. Her dark color scheme complements the tan blouse I wear, silk tucked into a black pencil skirt and beige pumps. My locks scramble in short curls and I wear deep red lipstick that could easily been have blood.   
No, we don’t fit in their young, crazy, category Andrea has just turned 26 and although there are no visible lines the calm of the mid- twenties seeps out unwanted.My age carries a formality that ensues authority. I can tell they don’t know what to make of us the wheels in their heads are turning. She sees it too and she scoffs.  
“You’re being loud my dear,” I say.  
“I know what you’re thinking,” she starts.  
“Don’t,” I hush her, “let’s not do this now.”  
“I want to do this now, tomorrow we are going to go shop for houses, houses which I hope become our home. Before we do that, before you explain to me why you pushed me out of your life a year ago, and why you decided to give this a change I want you to know a few things.”  
“Mmmm,” I hum and play with the fork. When I can’t control my thoughts, when they don’t line up perfectly I simply use silence. Her words sting for a second, although they are nothing but the truth. I did push her out that night, whispered for her to go and left her there to show herself out.   
“Miranda, why are you still up?” Stephan had asked a few hours later. It was well past three, the slight haze of slumber had left me and I simply sat there, in the sitting room of my own bedroom unable to get into the bed I shared with him.   
“I can’t sleep,” I murmur annoyed that he is interrupting my pity party. “Go back to sleep,” I say and I hope he does. Instead he groggily walks up to me and sits on the love seat upon which I was resting.   
“What’s wrong, you’ve been crying,” he states and waits for an answer.  
“Nothing… nothing is wrong since when do you fucking care?” I say and I know it’s unfair, what has just happened is not his fault.  
“What do you mean? Always.”  
“Please, you’re always so busy chasing all your whores that you barely notice me,” I say pushing his hand aside.  
He opens his mouth like a fish to say something but then he doesn’t. He gets up and paces about in the room, “maybe if you had cared when you married me half as much as you care for your friends, like Andrea them maybe I would not have needed to.”  
“You fucking idiot!” I say losing control like I very rarely do. I grab a glass decoration that sat on the table next to me, “why don’t you fuck off? Leave!” I saw at the same time as the object is hurled across the room smashing spectacularly over the bedroom door.

“And you want to tell me what things?” I say rounding up to the present, raising my head and looking up at the pools of hazelnut that stare at me.  
“That I love you. I know there are variables between us, age, power, money, fame. That we both feel the weight of them, the all-consuming doubts of a society that will throw those differences in our face, but I can assure you that I am not here for any of it. I only want you, and I will do anything to prove it to you.”  
“Okay …” I stammer, “and now?”  
She raises her shoulder signaling that she did not know.   
“I suppose now you give me that explanation,” she continues. I’ve been thinking about it all night long.   
“What explanation?” I smirk.  
“Why are you evading the subject you brought up?”  
I manage to raise an eyebrow, she wanted to know if we had to keep this a secret still, if the secret affair had to keep on being so. I wasn’t always good at explanations that did not involve colors, and fabrics and poses. For my clear direction and formidable skills in business, human connections often evaded me for obvious reasons. I had never shied away from who I was, I knew what they said about me behind my back, and for many instances their monikers were right. I often fit their descriptions of an Ice Queen, a cold insensitive bitch.   
“Show me,” I say seriously across the table.  
“Show you what?” she looks up confused.  
“I don’t know…” I say coyly gliding down the table, “ that you love me. Show me that you love me and I will show you if we have to keep this a secret.”  
She looks at me still confused, her foot taps the floor up and down, she blinks.

“Kiss me… here,” I say bending down to where she is still sitting and leaning on the table.  
I can hear her breathing and the smell of her perfume. It wasn’t hard I cupped her face in my hands and I kissed her. I kissed her completely, engulfed in her and without thought.   
The same couple that was looking at us, turns as if wanting to evade us. The table behind us coughs softly and when we’re done I laugh and she says, “I see.”  
“And now what?”  
“Now we finish dinner.”   
She nods, her hair shines in the light of the restaurant.  
“And Andrea? I believe you,” I say referring to her earlier confession.

When we get home, there is only one thing we really want. It’s written the dark of her eyes, in the hum of the wind circling outside the window and the pitter pater of the first rain since she landed. I only want to be with her, breathe her, touch her, I want it like I have never wanted anything. No other love has even been so strong, so consuming, so vivid. I want to touch her, to feel her skin, the very core of every vibration. I want to touch her soul. In London, it had been hasty and fast, there had been urgency and confusion, we simply shut the day out with sex, but today it was more than that. Today I took her coat off deliberately, in the shadow on the lamp while her eyes never disconnected from mine. Today I bend down and kissed her softly, touching only the wisp of her lips at first, then as I pulled her waist toward me, I kissed her more, her lips answered our tongues mingled. The pure velvet of her moans sent every tingle through my body, they were enough to make me climax if I had wanted to. I peeled her clothes off slower than I ever had, never taking my eyes of from hers and then I let her do the same. She unbuttoned my blouse, and glided the zipper of my skirt down with her teeth. It was the most erotic moment of my life perhaps and I had to steady myself. I just wanted to lift her and devour her there, to make her mine. I wanted to mark every single inch of her. This raw, possessive side was taking over, the dragon that was easy to bring forth in every meeting and every work compromise. I didn’t, because we had all the time in the world, we had as long as we wanted. The house was empty, and I wanted to make this last. When we both only stood in lingerie and consciousness, we climbed the bed and she straddled me.  
“Miranda, you’re beautiful,” she breathed leaning over me and placing kisses down my cheek up to my ears. I recoiled in the way she touched my neck, with the edge of her teeth and the soft of her lips. I twisted sideways under her and felt her wet slick core. It wasn’t like we’ve never been here before; but then again, we had never been here before. We had never been free, without a time limit, without a third person, without the shadow of anonymity and secrecy.   
I grasped the sheets below me, pulled them while she guided her lips down my thighs. She pressed herself to my core and I had to grasp for breath. I never moaned loud or, screamed but I simply murmured her name like a mantra to wash over me. After a few moments, I felt her fingers glide inside me, I wanted her to stay there forever, inside me, within me. The night was a repetition of the same, of her hands upon my body and my lips upon hers. I wanted to taste all of her, every crevice, every nook, every different flavor of her life.   
And for that moment, she was mine and I was hers.


	14. Caroline and Cassidy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And all this doesn't make sense  
> But love never makes sense  
> And sense is over rated anyway

She wakes up before me. I find her half sat up on the bed, with shorts and a pajama top that are mine but I haven’t worn in years and with a book she must have found somewhere in the den.  
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I ask still laced with sleep and sore muscles.  
“I didn’t want to, I like watching you sleep, I like having you next to me.”  
I smile, “do you now? Enough to last a while?” I ask.  
“Enough to last a life time and when this life is over, another life time too,” she smiles half joking, half serious. I sit up in bed and she crawls over to me, her head rests on my shoulder, the crown of her head nudges my neck, she snuggles close to me, her body curves just slightly to fit perfectly with me. She tucks her feet, and wraps her arms around me. The warmth of her body seeps into my body, balancing the rain that contradicts the sun we had the day before.  
“The twins come back from their weekend,” I say, “they come tomorrow. They were let down that you didn’t come the day you landed.”  
“Do they want to see me?” Andreas asks hesitantly, she hasn’t spoken to them since she left for London. Although Andrea did not mention a word, the twins eventually told me what had happened. I didn’t judge them, I didn’t reprimand them. I didn’t feel like I had a right, after all I was partly to blame for all of their misfortunes.  
I nod, “I know what happened, they told me. Enough time has elapsed, Andrea. I think they understand now.”  
She nods, I study her face. I wish I could know every single though she had, “they still love you the same as before darling, they were hurting and upset, but they are quite excited to be home with you … with us.”  
“So, they know, right? They know everything?” her large eyes widen, she’s seeking a truth, an answer. She sets the book that she wasn’t paying attention to anymore down and pulls away from me to see my blue eyes clearer.  
I miss her warmth but I love to see her smile, “They know everything,” I pause smiling at the memory of the bouncing twins;

“So, you’re finally going to admit that you two are a thing?” Cassidy asks in her no-nonsense voice, I am reminded how like me she is.  
I tilt my head in confusion, “what do you mean, finally?”  
“Mom, please don’t tell me you two haven’t been dancing around this since before she started coming to the house?” She talks like she’s 55, her eyes pierce into mine, eyebrows raised in annoyance and she tucks her hair behind her ears. Caroline simple looks at me, hands twisted in a knot.  
“I don’t appreciate your tone Cassidy,” I say unsure of how to answer that. How do I tell them that I was cheating on their step-father.  
“It’s okay mom, we know that Stephan was cheating on you,” Caroline interrupts in a quieter voice.  
“Umm...” for very few times in my life I am rendered speechless.  
“How long?” I ask after a few blinks and silence pass by.  
The twins look at each other, their identical faces mirror one another, their strawberry blond hair, their large unassuming eyes, their pale freckled skin, two peas in a pod and yet they were so different. Caroline wears burgundy lounge pants and a t-shirt with Madonna’s face plastered over it. I’d have to monitor what they wear more closely that ensemble screams tacky. At least Cassidy has learned some style, she wears black pants, paired with a naval stripped shirt and a nautical theme bracelet. They look so tall and grown up talking to me about relationships.  
“How long what?” Caroline asks faking innocence.  
“For a long time now,” Cassidy answers for her. “We had our suspicions about you and Andy since dinners became a thing, you never dine out with the same person constantly, definitely not weekly. Also, you buying her things, she was an ASSISTANT! I don’t know it was a little weird, but we love Andrea and so we never wanted to interrupt whatever was going on.”  
“Except when she was leaving?”  
“Moooommm, you said we’d forget that!” Cassidy whines and for a moment she sounds just like my little baby again.  
“We will, but it will probably be discussed if Andrea comes back into our lives?” I say. I didn’t’ want to provide assurances, I didn’t want to disappoint them again.  
“Why would she not come back?” they ask in unison, worry coloring their voice.  
“Well… people don’t always come back to other people. Maybe she’s happier now.”  
“Mom, we’re sure she feels the same way that you do. You should have seen the conflict in her voice when we went to her apartment, besides she owes us,” they say smiling.

“Turns out they already knew,” I say turning back to the young woman that was sitting on my bed.  
She chuckles, “I can only imagine.”  
“They want you here, Andrea. For some reason they like you, want us and for once in my life this has been easy.”  
“I wouldn’t call us easy,” she states, her eyes cast down.  
“I meant with the girls.”  
She nods quietly and snuggles against me again.  
“Did you tell them about the house yet?”  
She shakes he head, “Darling we just bought it yesterday!”  
She laughs and I had forgotten how much I love her laugh, the candid sway that bubbles over as her body shakes with it.  
“That is why I thought we could tell them together, like a family,” I add and I could feel the anxiety of her answer on my skin. Less than a week ago we were estranged in a way, we had ended on faint terms, a long goodbye and nothing. Today we’re enjoying morning on my bed, talking about being a family.  
“Is that what you really want Miranda?” she gets up again, propping herself on her elbow, hair hanging to the side.  
I wasn’t going to, not yet. I was going to wait until we got the keys to the house, but this is the perfect moment. Her simple stance sends thoughts of photoshoots to my brain, white light, soft sheets and a simple white camisole, morning beauty. Hair flowing down, large brown eyes, a cover on natural beauty. I think Oscar de la Renta a few issues back, I think Banana Republic fall 2000, I think Vera Wang wedding collection. I run my hands slightly down her hair, kiss her lips chastely and get out of bed softly.  
“Where are you going?” she asks worried.  
I come back after a few beats of silence and see the look of shock on her face as she realizes what that the small box in my hand is. It’s something so different to be on the other side of that realization, to see her gasp and steady herself propped on the bed still. I don’t every remembering feeling so many emotions as I did right now, perhaps the only time had been the girl’s father, my first husband when I had naively thought that I loved him. Seeing the emotions pan out on Andrea’s glassy chocolate eyes, seeing the shock, insecurity, happiness, incredulity and love fade in and out as she tried to formulate a response would be a memory that I would not forget in all my years to come. In the Hamptons, I had felt that she wanted to know everything about me, that she needed explanations to feel validated, that she wanted to be a part of all the years she had missed in my life and with that I felt that she would one day leave. Perhaps asking her to marry me officially was an attempt to keep her with me forever.  
“Andrea Sachs, we have been through so much in such a little time and through it all my darling, I have only been certain of one thing. That I love you and I want nothing more than your happiness, I hope that happiness can be with me, for the rest of our lives…”  
She’s crying even though she wipes at her eyes furiously, trying to pretend she’s okay.  
“Will you marry me?” I ask sitting on the edge of the bed, opening the box that contained a glistening diamond antique with two emeralds flanking it. I had chosen the antique because she always reminded me of an old soul, someone wise beyond her years.  
She nods before she can answer.  
“I wasn’t going to do it right now. I was going to wait until we got the keys to the house but your question, this is my answer. Yes, Andrea I really want this, I really want us. I want a family with you. Do you?”  
She lets me put the ring on her finger as I look at her.  
“Yes, I do Miranda. It is all I have wanted since Paris, to spend all my days with you. Of course, I will marry you Miranda Priestly. You are the one thing I never knew I needed, but I do. I need you like the Earth needs the sun.”  
“I adore you Andrea, I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt this, been so …”  
“Vulnerable?” she asks.  
I laugh nervously, “yes.”

“Andy, we want to apologize,” is the first thing my two daughters say when they see the tall brunette standing at the train gate, ready to meet them. She’s standing there in a polka-dot dress we just bought and wringing her hands in nervousness.  
She raises her hand and says, “there is nothing to apologize for, you both were right in a way. I was running away from … your mom. I was running away from my feelings,” I look over at her and smile extending out my hand for her to take.  
The twins look up at us, “anyway that’s the past now we’re here and we have so many grand things to tell you both.”  
“We already know, dad said you bought a house, the house you never wanted to buy with him. That’s why we left, he’s a jerk and we missed you Andy,” I laugh at their sassiness. Yes, he always wanted us and by that he meant me, to buy a house in the Hamptons but I didn’t want bad memories to linger there forever.  
“Geez, you guys have to stop knowing everything! We were going to take you guys out for … say pizza; but now since you know,” Andrea pauses as they wrap her in a hug.  
“No, no, we don’t we’ll take it back!”  
“Now we will just stay home and read, right Miranda?” she asks across to me.  
“Exactly,” I say not wanting to say much, to interrupt this perfect moment. For once there was really nothing marring my happiness with her, no guilt over an affair, no secrets, no wanting the best for her, because dare I say it? We were the best for her.  
“No Andy! We’ll pretend we don’t know, besides there is stuff we don’t know … like what color is the house? Does it have a pool? And a tennis court? Who is our neighbor?” They pause as she pulls her hair up for a brief second, “and what is that ring on your finger?”  
“On second thought, we do owe you two pizza,” Andrea announces but it’s too late to stop their small teenage shrieks … “Oh my God mom!!! Did you propose? !!”  
It’s also too late to stop the picture nearby being taken of us, I don’t care for once.  
“Well, we still have to wait a few weeks for the divorce to finalize but yes I did.”  
“We’re happy that you did mom, that means Andy will stay forever.”  
I look up at her as she’s looking at the twins and at the ring at the same time, she too noticed the flash go off and I can tell by her stance that there is a lot going on in her head. I pull her toward me in a fleeting moment of courage and whisper very softly in her ear, “I love you.” I hope they catch that photo too, we look perfect.


	15. Brutal Honesty

I had to admit that for someone who people considered on top of the world, I was full of insecurities. I was afraid of my own imperfections, of looking old, tired, of not being good enough at my job, of failure, of loneliness, of being a bad mother. The expectations placed on icons, idols, movie starts weight on them like pounds of guilt. They are supposed to live the perfect life that people want them to, after all don’t they have everything to be happy? They have money, power, fame. Furthermore, the expectations placed on women who fill these roles, the glamorous roles to have everything is crushing at times. We are expected to be just as good or better than the men who sit in boardrooms smoking cigars and commenting about digits they don’t understand, we have to exceed them to even be considered. I had to learn to play by the rules, to outwit them, outwork them, out-perfect them all, I had to learn to do it in stilettos and designer gowns, with perfect hair and lipstick.  
I was critiqued for spending too much time away from my daughters and my family, my first husband said that ‘I should sleep with my career’ and then I was critiqued if I spent too much time away from my desk at the magazine. It was a desolate game with no win.  
I was supposed to know the secret, I was supposed to be a magician and pull the perfect balancing act while the men around me sat around, shot a few at the golf course and got home to fuck their wives and never saw their kids. So, I gave up, I no longer needed to be the perfect everything, I became Editor in Chief at 36, and have been doing if ever since then. I am every bit the bitch the media proclaims I am, I demanded nothing short of perfection from my staff, because I wasn’t asking for the stars. I was asking for competence, for people to do their goddam jobs, I am asking for organization and attention to detail, I’m asking for a sense of urgency and beauty. Fashion may not be cure to cancer but it can save people in so many ways. I’m not just talking about portraying a personality, exuding authority, expressing your brand, I’m talking about it can be used to help politics, and poverty and global warming. And if the people that work here don’t see it as life changing, if they don’t believe that they must give their best work, well … then they don’t need to work for me. There are plenty of mediocre magazines to write in. I do set the bar impossibly high, but I set if for myself too.   
“where is my coffee?” I ask Dominique the new assistant as I she follows me into the office, 

“Um… “

“Did I ask you for your answer? I didn’t think so,” I said back in annoyance. I was Tuesday and I had been living all Monday in a half expectation that there would be an article about us online or that the PR team would call. I had failed to mention it because for once I wanted it to be just mine, not part of my brand, or the magazine, or the social media team. I wanted it to be just us, like a normal family; besides I didn’t want to rush Andrea into the media frenzy that would always be part of being with me. I didn’t want that to be another ‘variable’ as she had put it, for her to consider. The truth is that as someone who carries the baggage of three failed marriages, I not only felt that Andrea deserved better, but there was always the little voice in the back of my mind stating that this would not last. It often led me to feel sadness in moments where I should be filled with hope. I thought back to London and the nostalgia that plagued me at the moment Andrea agreed to start over. Perhaps those thoughts in themselves sabotaged my relationship, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. Wednesday rolled around and still nothing, I began to think maybe I had been wrong, maybe no pictures were taken, maybe no one cared.   
I went home to two over sugared teens who had been fed ice-cream late in the evening and a fiancée who finally came to visit, three days after having gone back to her apartment.   
“Did you miss me?” she asks standing by the piano in the game room.  
I smile, the edges of my lips curve slowly as if I’m in no hurry to answer, and my eyes rake her informal attire, her dark wash jeans, and her simple black camisole.   
“Terribly,” I say.  
“Me too,” she breathes.  
“I think I may need to have you stay here forever,” I say and I regret it. Does it sound to desperate? Does it sound too soon? She doesn’t seem taken back, she smiles. Her almond eyes sparkle and she sits on the piano bench. I realize I have to walk over to her. When I sit down, she places her hand over mine.  
“As soon as the divorce is finalized, we can talk,” she whispers and it isn’t meant to be a hurtful statement but it stings. It is as if she’s reminding me of where it all started, as if she’s being the moralistic one in the equation.  
“Miranda, I do have one favor, condition for this to work,” she continues before anything else happens. My mind jumps to conclusions, I think of so many favors she can ask, they all range in the purity of their intentions and I realize that even if they weren’t in my best interest I’d give them to her.   
“I want you to promise me, we’re always going to be honest with each other,” she states.  
The simplicity of her request baffles me. It was so simple and yet so hard.  
“Aren’t we?” I say.  
“I want us to be honest and open about everything. Every dream, and insecurity, I want us to speak even if it hurts. That is the only way we’re going to work,” she continues.  
It takes me a second to process what she’s saying.  
“You mean like the doubts I have of you thinking that asking you to move in, sounds too desperate? Or the one about how ….” I pause, this is so unlike me. I have trouble expressing my feelings, I don’t do vulnerable, I don’t cry. “or how insecure you make me feel?”  
I take a long, deliberate breath, the squeeze of her hand on mine increases. We have put the twins to bed an hour ago. We’re alone.  
“Yes, just like that,” her kiss is slow and wet. Lips touch against mine, she pulses slowly, her hands wrap around my waist, her left one meets my hair. It lasts for a long moment, we’re breathing heavy when we stop.  
“It isn’t desperate at all. I want to be here every day, every night” she smiles.  
“I promise Andrea,” I say and she nods, “me too.”  
She doesn’t tell me what she wants to be honest about, but we’re making progress.

Two things happen the following day, I am interrupted by a newspaper folded to fashion, being thrown down on my desk, “Can you at least give me a fucking call before you decide to go find a lesbian lover?”   
I look up, I had not seen the twins father come in. He’s faded silver eyes look at angrily at me.  
“who let you in?” I say airily like I always do, my glasses hang halfway up my nose, looking annoyingly at him.  
“Miranda, I’m sorry he didn’t…”  
I shake my head, slight pout at Dominique. It has the effect of shutting her up as Emily drags her from the door frame.   
“I’m the father of your children, can you have some consideration?”  
“Now, you remember about Caroline and Cassidy, but not every time you return them home early? Or when you refuse to take them? When whatever woman you’re with is more important than them? Now you are their father?”  
“I’ve always … I’m not here to discuss that. I’m here for this shit,” he points to the newspaper.  
I get up deliberately, grab the paper by the edge and toss it in the trash.  
“First off, you know I don’t read gossip. Secondly whoever I decide to sleep with, is my concern. It isn’t yours.”  
“It is if it involves …”  
“Caroline and Cassidy are sole custody, I doubt any judge will ever rule for you, now go home drink some of the whiskey I gave you for Christmas and come back another day when you have decided to use your library voice again.”  
He takes a breath too, and shakes his head.  
To my surprise he walks out without another word.  
“Get me all the major new publications on my desk,” I say to Dominique who has reappeared.  
“Get me Tom, Anna and also call Public relations up here.”  
I can tell she has no idea, who Tom or Anna are, but she will figure it out.  
Less than fifteen minutes later, David the PR director is walking through the door.  
“Miranda, we didn’t know,” are the first words that he opens with.  
“I want the press minimized, no more stories this week, I want no reporters outside the doors, my house or my daughters school, I want a security detail for my fiancée,” I say.   
“Are we still on divorce negotiations?” he asks tentatively.  
“Fix it,” I turn to him, he avoids looking up from his notebook.  
“Of course, I’ll … um… I’ll update you,” he says and runs out.   
“Miranda, Stephan is on the phone,” Emily comes in probably having judged it better to deliver the newspapers herself.  
“Take a message and call …” I hesitate to say her name, “call Andrea.”  
Emily swallows and then nods. I can’t tell what to make of her reaction. I don’t care.

Famous people will always tell you that they don’t read about themselves, that they avoid the news, the tabloids, the gossip. If you were a fly on the wall, you’d see the lack of veracity in that statement. You’d see the agonizing over the mirror, the wondering how and why, you’d see the self-pity, and the narcissism. It is just as alienating as it is wonderful to be idolized.   
“Miranda, I … I know,” she answers before I even say her name.  
“Are you at work?”   
“I am, first day back! I’m sure Arlene is thrilled to have to come in through the back door to avoid the reporters."  
“I’m sorry darling,” I explain on the phone, “I should have … warned you.”  
“I knew, I knew what I was getting into, “she chuckles on the phone.   
I decide not to tell her about the happenings of my morning, I’ll tell her tonight.  
“I have a security detail for you, don’t argue with me. Its temporary.”  
“Fine, I have to go… work. See you for dinner?’ she asks.  
“I can’t tonight, but you’re welcome to come after, “ the implication is clear.  
“I have a lot of work to catch up on, this weekend?”  
“Of course,” I say.  
“Oh, and Miranda?”   
“Yes?”  
“I love you, you’ll never forget it right?”  
“Never,” I say.

I can’t help but smile as I hang up the phone.  
“Why are you smiling?” Nigel asks as he comes in.   
“Well it’s not at the incompetence of my staff, that is for sure. Where is the presentation I asked you for?”  
“In my hand,” he states displaying the photographs on my desk, “you know there were reporters at Andrea’s apartment, you should have her stay at the townhome.”  
“Emily! … Call Jocelyn, get the twins from school and where is my coffee? If it’s not here when I finish with Nigel tell her to not come back ever and then you get the coffee.”

We couldn’t contain the media that week, if she wanted to be a journalist at some point I’m sure she hated it by the end of the week. I was used to it, an expert in avoidance and good press manners. For her, it was brutal. This wasn’t Cannes and a assumed dalliance with Marie, this was New York city and I was the most influential editor in fashion, perhaps the most well known in media.   
“Cheer up Andrea, it gets easier,” I say annoyed that she’s talking about it for the 50th time that week.  
“I know, I just … I thought it would be faster.”  
“This isn’t Cannes and your unknown love affair,” I retort and then regret it.   
She doesn’t answer at first.  
“That’s not what I meant.”  
“That’s exactly what you meant, you’re Miranda Priestly and I should know that right?’  
“Yes, honestly right?”  
“Brutal honesty,” she sighs back looking down.


	16. Snow

I should not have said what I said, but she didn’t answer back. In a way, this was what she had asked for, this was me, this is what it would always be like, she would live her life between magazine covers, tabloids, reporters. If she didn’t see it now, the road would only be harder and we would be back at square one. I held my breath for a few palpitating moments I thought that she could leave. Yet she didn’t and we shouldered on, half honestly and half silence, the days after her arrival turned into weeks, and months. The lazy heat of late summer turned into sheets of snow blanketing the city, the city that never sleeps became quiet with sleet covered sidewalks and strings of lights. Then the grace of snow turned into the buoyancy of spring, the flowers blooming and the choir of birds chirping.  
We settled into a routine of sorts one where Andrea had not completely moved in but she spent most of her days here, one where we hadn’t completely moved out to the Hamptons but we visited enough, on weekends and long holidays. One where the twins occasionally called her mom, then they’d look up to see if we had anything to say, we never did, and every time I would silently pray that Andrea never left otherwise she’d not only break my heart but the theirs too.  
It wasn’t easy by any measures, though we made it seem to the flashing cameras that often met us outside the MET, the park, fashion week. Being together no longer meant secret nights at a hotel or stolen kisses in Paris, it meant doing the normal everyday together. It meant I’d have to go from time to time to Martini might with Nigel and her, it meant she’d bring her friends over for eggnog on Christmas day. There was a layer of awkward as we all sat around in black and red, sipping from custom Baccarat wine glasses. They were all half my age, skeptics of who we were as a couple, knowing of everything that had transcribed.  
There was Lisa who’d I had met before at the bar when I had asked Andrea to be my friend. I liked her though my overhead of her conversation was that she didn’t believe we’d last. She was beautiful and bright, she was honest and straightforward but with the elegance of working with famous people and a lot of sarcasm. Then there was Doug who was Andrea’s best friend, he was soft and reserved at first, though once I got to know him he was funny, had a sense of fashion and above all just wanted Andrea to be happy.  
“Andy and I go way back, Miranda,” he said as we lingered in the foyer waiting for the table to be set. The house glowed with the warmth of silver holiday lights. There was a tall tree that stretched a few feet before the high ceiling ended, the strong smell of pine encircled us. This year we had long tear shaped ornaments in royal blue and deep purple. The reflections of the lights made the ornaments look like they shone, bows of gold lined in the same purple enclose the empty spaces and the bottom is filled with gift boxes, toy trains and large candy canes. Every hand rail and fire place top is decorated with the same colors. At the end the hallway that leads to the dining room is a new frame that I just had custom made, it is a portrait taken on a recent trip to the beach house. We had a lifestyle photographer do a shoot with the twins against my knowledge he had taken a picture all four of us between a take. It had turned out to be my favorite of the set. Printed in silvered black and white, the ocean contrasted against our skins, and the soft elegance of laughter could almost be heard from the frame.  
“May I call you Miranda?” he asked as we both stared idly at the picture.  
“Of course,” I say and turn to give him my full attention.  
“As long as you make her happy Miranda, you have all my support… not that you need it but you do. Andy loves you,” he smiles.  
“Thank you, Doug, that means a lot to me.”  
And then there is Lily, “Doesn’t the age difference worry you?” she asks halfway to dinner, Lisa almost chokes on her food, and Andrea stares across the table at her friend, “Every day,” I say smiling.  
“Lily, that’s not dinner material,” Andrea interrupts.  
“No, Andrea, she’s right she can asks anything she wants. We’re all on the same side here.”  
“And you’re really going to marry her?’ she asks after dinner, when someone decided that it was a good idea to leave us alone. Andrea and Lisa had gone to her more wine, Doug was outside taking a call.  
“If she so desires, “I say.  
“And you don’t think living with you, you’re dragging her to something she didn’t sign up for?” she continues. Her eyes pierce at me as if she was trying to see my soul, her hair is wild around her dark skin and the gold ribbons that decorate her earrings flash in the light.  
“I would never drag her into anything,” I say and it takes every ounce of self -control to not tell her to leave. “Andrea is capable of her own mature decisions.”  
“Have you thought about her happiness?”  
I nod.  
“Has she even spoken to her parent’s?”  
I realize that Andrea hasn’t really spoken about her family.  
“She doesn’t come from three divorces, her family is important to her,”  
“And that’s why I’m here,” Lisa interrupts and I like her more and more.  
“Champagne ladies?’ 

“I never want to have Lily over again” I say as we undress later that night.  
“Excuse me?” Andrea turns around, “you said she could ask whatever.”  
“I don’t want to fight about this darling,” I apply lotion to my face.  
“I’m not fight I just didn’t know you could tell me who to be friends with?” she stands there in Zac Posen still.  
“You wanted honesty,” I say still applying the lotion, in circles, looking at her for my seat in the mirror.  
“You mistake honesty for telling people what to do,” she says still standing there, barefoot, hair down, slip dress on.  
“I am not telling you who to be friends with, you can be friends with her I just don’t want her back in my house,” I say. It’s been a long tiring night. I want to go to bed.  
“Your house?” she raises her voice, I turn around, “I don’t want to make this into technicalities, Andrea. I want to go to bed.”  
“Are you fucking kidding me, you try and tell me how to live my life and then shut me up? I’m not your assistant anymore!”  
I don’t know how this became about her being my assistant, “I have never treated you as such,”  
“No? … all you tell me is what to do, do this do that, see this person, wear this … “  
I take a deep breath, I don’t need to win this I just need to get to bed.  
“Fine, I just want this one thing.”  
“Fine what? Fine I’m right? Fine don’t bring her?” She’s upset, there is fire in her eyes, her voice is raised higher than normal and she’s still not getting undressed.  
“I don’t know what you want me to tell you, that woman doesn’t like me. She’s rooting for us to fail, I don’t need one more person for that,” I say.  
“How about some real honesty? How about you tell me something real, instead of using it to tell me who to be friends with.”  
“Real honesty? Well I don’t see you racing to spill the content of your thoughts?” I say, I was trying.  
“What is that supposed to mean? Miranda?”  
“Just that, I’ve never heard you say honestly anything that you struggle with, that you have doubts for, nothing. According to your silence everything between us is magnificent”  
“Well… isn’t it?” she asks and I’m not sure if it’s sarcasm or truth. She finally sits down, on the edge of the bed. She takes of the dress in a single swipe and let’s it pool at the edge of the bed. Under any other circumstances I’d admire the blue lace brace she’s wearing, and the matching bikini bottom, I’d trace my hands down the balconette of her bra and tell her how beautiful she is, but today all I can see is that she is so young.  
“You want real honesty?” I ask.  
She shrugs, it really wasn’t a question. I could have cared less if she said no.  
“You want fucking honesty? How about the fact that you say you don’t care about our ‘variances’ but you went out and chose the first lover who was the complete opposite of me?” I’m not longer trying to be calm, the octaves of my voice are raised and the glass bottles that were sitting calmly on the vanity crash and tumble to the floor. The clatter makes her jump briefly but I’m talking so fast I don’t notice her wince.  
“Someone half my age, young and free? How about that you never reached out? Were you really coming back Andrea? How about how fucking insecure I feel if someone looks at you, if you don’t want to come home, because I care too much! Because if you leave I’ve put played all my card for you and what would I do?”  
“But you are Mir…”  
She’s going to say I’m Miranda Priestly and I wonder if all this is hero worship.  
“I know who I am, I know what I’m worth I know that many people would take your place, but what would they do it for? And then the twins, they call you mom? What do I tell them? Huh? Is that honesty enough for you? And when I sent you away? It was because I wanted you to be happy, and I wanted to get away from you, because being your friend was not fucking enough, because I wanted to try and save my marriage, you have no idea what another failure means. You could not possibly imagine. Yes, I wanted you to leave, because I panicked when my own daughter asked you to stay forever. So yes, if Lily is not on our side then I don’t want her here, in my house or our house whatever it is.”  
The silence that follows is broken by Caroline opening the door, “Mom?”  
Andrea has slipped into a silk gown somewhere in between my rant and she’s the first one to answer, “did we wake you?”  
“Are you fighting?”  
Andrea shakes her head, “a little, we disagree on something but that happens sometimes”  
Caroline purses her lips, “don’t treat me like I’m five Andy.”  
“Bobbsey, go back to sleep, we’re fine,” I say.  
“Geez mom, can you at least marry her before, you make her leave?” she deadpans.  
“Caroline Samantha Priestly!”  
“I’m going back to bed,” she shuts the door behind her and we’re left with a bigger silence than before. Now I know, what they really think. Andrea broods over what has just happened and puts the matching robe on.  
“I’m going home for a week,” she states and it has nothing to do with what we talked.  
“Home?” I ask and I realize that I was crying. This makes it worse, I wish I could draw back all the words I said, but then, I don’t.  
“Home to Ohio, my parents want to meet you,” she says as she walks into the closet and comes back with a beige Burberry coat, my beige Burberry coat.  
“So are you going alone or asking me to accompany you?” I ask confused and angry. So much for Christmas day.  
“I don’t know Miranda,” she says after a beat, her arms swing into the coat, and she buttons it half way.  
“I don’t know. I’m going to go to my apartment, I’m going to have a few drinks and we’re going to talk about this tomorrow.”  
“What?” I say.  
“We’re going to talk about this tomorrow, and I swear Miranda if you stand me up, if you decide to power play it, if you shut me out … we’re done.”  
“We’re done? A second ago you tell me that your parents want to meet me, and now you’re willing to end this?”  
“I can’t do this tonight,” she’s got her cell phone and purse on her hand.  
“Andrea!” I call after her but she’s down the corridor and I don’t have the energy to chase after her nor do I want to wake up the twins again.  
I run my hands down my hair, it is all so frustrating. Suddenly I remember why falling in love had been out of the equation.  
Had it been out of line? I don’t think so.  
“Did she leave?” Cassidy and Caroline come back into the room, this time their face is sad and their feeling unguarded.  
“Yes,” I say but just for tonight.  
“Are you sure?” Caroline asks.  
“I think so,” I say. I don’t think I was out of line, Lily was out of line and Andrea’s need to defend her even though she had been present at dinner was insufferable.  
Had I lost my calm, had I said more than was needed, perhaps. I tended to at times, but it wasn’t a lie. Andrea had never explained Marie, if she loved her, if she didn’t. We had simply chosen to shut it out, with all the differences it came. I was like vintage Chanel and Marie was like new Alexander McQueen. I was black Mercedes Benz and she was self-driving Tesla. We were opposites, the moon and the sun.  
“And if she doesn’t?” they say again.  
“I think she will,” I say hoping.  
“We like her mom, she’s better than all of them.”  
“I know Bobbseys”  
“Can we come with you to meet her?”  
I want to say yes, I want to say yes and do the unthinkable. I want to play the child card, to have them there with me.  
“No, but we can go watch a movie after” I offer.  
They pout, their face falls and their red hair catches fire with the yellow light in the room.  
I know better than that. Tomorrow it will be just her and I.

I meet her at her apartment, because this isn’t’ a conversation to have in public.  
“I … I don’t ever want to do this again, Andrea,” I say dropping the bottle of wine on the granite shelf I had chosen for her.  
“We’re going to fight Miranda, that’s what couples do,” she whispers.  
“No, I refuse to believe that,” I say softly and airily like I always do. People always listen to powerful people, to influential people, there is never a need to speak up.  
“No like last night, not about that.”  
“I used to think you only wanted me as an affair. An affair you pay off once it’s ended. And I was jealous of Stephan, and I was furious when you left me without an apology to eat dinner with him, and I was heartbroken when you told me to go to London. I was angry, and confused and I ran down the street, no direction. I had coffee with a stranger, she told me she had an affair too. I wanted to get lost in London and I did. I did everything opposite to you. I wanted to forget all about you. I have been many things Miranda, angry, sad, afraid, alone, betrayed, but I have never been unsure that I loved you. Is that honest enough for you? If you’re unsure that I will stay, I have always been unsure you wanted me to stay and we can continue our stance forever like this. How is that for honesty?”  
I laugh nervously, “and Lily.”  
“You can’t win all the time Miranda.”  
“I don’t want to win, I just want to be …”  
“Surrounded by the same opinions, the answer is no. She’s still my friend. She is coming to our house.”  
I let out a visible sigh, “No, she’s not.”  
“I want to know now,” Andrea says and finally hands me the glass of wine she’s been holding hostage. I drink it perhaps too fast, because she eyes me when I pour one more. I try to sip it but I drink that too.  
“Know what?”  
“About Stephan, about me. Why did you invite me to that suite?”  
“this isn’t the time to cash that promise in Andrea.”  
“You swore,” she reproaches.  
I’m about to pour the remaining wine, “Don’t” she whispers holding my hand with hers.  
“So, Ohio?”  
A smile appears on her face her pools of chocolate shine and I can see my own reflection in her, blue eyes and teal wrap dress encased in black blazer.  
“Next week, they want to meet you and the girls. They know thanks to the media. Well I called them,”  
“I’ll have Emily make arrangements.”  
“they want us to stay at the house,” she adds.  
I don’t feel like I can win any more arguments tonight, “Okay.”  
“New Years in Ohio, something you’ll never forget,” she whispers jokingly and she was right.


	17. Arlene

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold fast to dreams  
> For if dreams die  
> Life is a broken-winged bird  
> That cannot fly.  
> Hold fast to dreams  
> For when dreams go  
> Life is a barren field  
> Frozen with snow. 

It was a last minute contract negotiation with ProSieben media that made us get on a flight to Paris, the week before New Year’s. It was only a day and a half, we’ve be back in time to stay with her family until the 4th. It should have been an uneventful trip, once you visit Paris too many times it becomes uneventful and I had an affinity for the south of France.   
It should have been, and it was until I woke up at 5am to a breathless Emily calling.  
“Miranda, about the wedding invitations,” she started.  
I could not believe she would call me for that! “Call the planner,” I breathe into the phone.  
“No, um. It’s about the announcement … um… maybe we should wait until after the New Year.”  
“Emily, have you lost the ability to speak and string together coherent sentence?”  
There is a silence on the other line, I straighten up in bed, Andrea’s side is empty. She went out for a run before we have to leave to the airport, on our flight to Ohio.  
“No, …Miranda … well, there is an article, it’s an unknown blog, there really isn’t, we should not even be bothered by it, PR is doing everything to take it off, I should …”  
“I won’t ask you again, what is it?”  
I can almost see the hesitation in her pale face. “There is a photo of Andrea with Mademoiselle Baptiste. It looks like their faces are very close,” she says and the understanding is that they are kissing.   
“Send me the link,” I say and don’t give her a chance to explain before I hang up.   
I had just finished looking at the photograph from the night before, an event Andrea had gone to alone, when the hotel door opens.   
“It’s cold outside,” Andrea states taking of her shoes, she leans in to kiss me. I move my face. “What’s wrong?” she asks.  
I simply extend my hand and show her the phone, “this.”  
She rolls her eyes her ponytail is now loose and she finished taking off the tie and a cascade of dark brown hair falls.  
“It’s a bad angle, nothing happened.”  
“It looks like,” my words are cut off by Andrea shaking her head.  
“Nothing happened Miranda, she came by to say hello. I was with Emy and her boyfriend. “  
“Okay,” I say trying to not make an episode out of it, though the imagine of her and Marie loops in my head. I grab a towel and head for the shower.  
“Do you believe me?” she asks following me.  
“Yes. Now we just need to get through the week with your family,” I say.  
“Get through it and then what?” she asks.  
“Nothing, just get through it,” I say and close the bathroom door.

The flight resembles the last one we took out of Paris, full of awkward moments and long silences.   
“Can you at least pretend you’re happy, my family will be at the gate,” she says as we’re about to land.   
“I am happy, didn’t you say our relationship was magnificent?” I answer and it was meant to sting, to be full -fledged sarcastic.  
“Fine,” she shakes her head, I want to ask her what is fine but I let it go.  
“Andrea! My baby girl,” her parents greet at the gate. Her mother is tall and blonde, with dark chocolate eyes just like her and the same smile. She leans in to greet me and hesitates, “I’m Rachel.”  
“Miranda, call me Miranda,” I explain.  
Her father seems open and relaxed, wearing a navy polo and some jeans. He’s got grey hair now, but his eyes are light green and his skin is pale. Her sister looks exactly like Andrea except with blonde hair.  
“We’re so glad you could come,” her father states, “I’m Richard, we were expecting your daughters too?” he asks.  
I shake my head, “we had an unplanned trip to Paris.”  
“Oh! that’s right, Andy did tell me. They are with your ex-husband right?” her mother clarifies and I just want to get out of the airport.  
I nod, glad that at least I didn’t have to explain he wasn’t their father. That Stephan had turned out to be a better father figure than any of my ex-husbands, including their father and yet I had cheated on him.  
“Well we brought two cars, who do you want to ride with?”  
I don’t know much about her family, what they do or what their wealth is. I don’t know how big of an extended family they have or if they want us together, I realize it has been selfish of me, perhaps Lily was right.   
“We’ll ride with you dad and mom and sis can take the luggage,” Andrea replies quickly and it’s interesting to see her in a different dynamic. The one she is used to, one she ran away from.  
The first two days are simple and full of small preparations. Her mother though nice enough doesn’t interact with me so much, she occupies Andrea with prepping treats with the kids, watering the plants and going to get groceries. Her father on the other hand is a pleasant companion, he is interested in Runway, in my daughters and what our plans are.  
“Andrea told me the wedding is next year, do you have a place yet?” he asks.  
I shake my head politely, “the planner is helping with that.” Though now I’m not sure there will be a wedding. I don’t tell him that.  
“And your daughters what do they think?”  
“They love Andrea, I think they have since before we were together,” I say and that is the honest truth.  
He nods, “would you like some coffee?” He offers while Andrea and her mother call family.  
I learn that every year they hosted New Years, it was a very simple affair, family and good food and then if the weather permitted the drove over to see the fireworks.  
“Would you like to go Miranda?” her mother asks. It is the first time she tries to bring me into conversation and for a second her eyes sparkle and her face smiles over.  
“I would love to accompany the family in this tradition Rachel,” I answer.  
“You’re the best spoken partner our daughter has ever had, wise choice for a journalist,” her father jokes and we all laugh.  
It’s surprisingly easy to feel comfortable with them, there is no pressure to be anything. For a Midwest family, they are more than accepting of Andrea’s choice of partner, her sister asks about fashion and even has me help her buy outfits. I like the humdrum of their life, they ask about us but not too much. They want to know dates, when the wedding will be, they want to know how the media has been, funny anecdotes and if Andrea will move in completely before or after the wedding, but they never pressure, never make me feel uncomfortable.   
We try, at least I do. We try to make it seem like everything was great but her father knew. Why would I imagine they didn’t? I would know if something was off with any of the twins. Perhaps it was when she tried to kiss me at midnight under the fireworks and I stepped away after a simple brushing of our lips, perhaps it was when I put my hand on her thigh and then withdrew it tentatively, perhaps it was the way we had been sitting apart from each other.   
“Miranda,” her father approaches me on the last full day we were there.   
“Richard?” I say.  
“Would you like to join me for some amazing scones? They are the talk of town and there is some good coffee I know you’re fond of,” he pauses. “Andrea and Rachel have gone to do some shopping.”  
I nod, “of course.”   
I follow him to the car and we go downtown, I have a feeling there is more to this than good coffee, which really does turn out to be great. Some of the best coffee I ever had. Subtle dark roast notes and cherry undertones.   
“Miranda,” he says again as we find a shaded seat in the outdoor patio overlooking the street and the stores surrounding us.  
“I don’t intend to tell you how to live your relationship with my daughter, but I can give you some advice.”  
I smile.   
“When we were younger, Rachel and I, Andrea wasn’t born yet, Rachel almost had an affair with someone else. She was finishing her Master’s degree after having our first daughter, one of her professors. Gaining that trust back is the hardest thing we can imagine.”  
He pauses, I haven’t said a thing, but my coffee is almost gone. I am paying attention.  
“I think this is both of you on many levels. I’m not sure when the relationship started between you two, nor do I want to intrude your life, but I believe there has often been a shadow of a third person.” He looks up to scan my face.  
I nod slightly, barely perceivable. In a sense, he is closer to my age than I am to Andrea’s yet he seems to be giving me advice, perhaps because he only has one marriage and I’m about to have four.  
“We separated for a few months. I came back and we swore we’d always be honest but most importantly we would talk about what happened once and never bring it back. It was hard, Miranda, I’m not saying it wasn’t. Do you love her?”  
I nod again, “more than anything Richard.”  
He smiles, it’s a broad, honest smile and it reminds me so much of Andrea.   
“The photograph?” he asks and I’m genuinely caught off guard.  
“Uh…”  
“Andy didn’t tell me, I just know. I had to learn to follow my daughter to make sure she was safe. I have never interfered in her life, until now, until you, because I see how much she loves you.”  
“Yes, the photograph it just one more thing,” I say and I wish I could tell him everything.  
The sun starts to hit our table, it is setting, the tables are almost empty, the trees rustle with the wind.  
“Andy would never betray you Miranda, she can be many things but she’s fiercely loyal, and if she has left everything for you … she wouldn’t throw it all away for someone else. Give her a chance but you have to learn to trust her, she isn’t your exes, …” he looks up, “no offense.”  
I shake my head, “it’s fine.”  
“They weren’t my best choices in life,” I say, “but Andrea, she’s different. She is so unlike me and yet I see myself in her. I don’t know if that even makes sense. I don’t even know if sitting here talking to you makes sense.”  
“I understand the feeling,” he answers back.  
“Being with her feels right in every category Richard,” I pause take a last bite out of the scone more out of nervousness than hunger, “but there is so much that separates us. She is so young.”  
“She won’t leave Miranda, is that what you’re afraid of?”  
I nod again, “and Rachel was fine with …us?”  
“It took her a second to process everything, I won’t lie to you. She just want’s what is best for Andrea, but seeing you two together has changed her perspective. She told me you two make a perfect pair, she said it makes her think of us.”  
I smile this time it’s completely carefree.   
“That means much more than you can imagine. Being here this week, being with Andrea has been the most real thing for me in a long time. I felt normal.”  
He nods and answers, “you two are welcomed any time. We hope you come back, and we can’t wait to meet the girls.”  
No one would ever believe this conversation happened, that I had let someone tell me what I had to do, that I was wrong, yet it did. I could not reproach him, because all he wanted was to make sure we made it.  
I nod, “thank you Richard, I could not ask for more in a father in law.”  
He breaks into laughter and finishes the last sip of his coffee, “shall we go?”  
I nod and we make our way to the car, “wasn’t that great coffee?”  
“I am afraid, I must agree, “ I say.

I instruct Emily to release the announcement anyway, the photo has been taken down for now and we fly home in relative peace.  
“Thank you Miranda,” she says as we open the door to the townhouse.  
“for what?”  
“For being with my family,” she says softly.  
“I think it is I who must thank them, I had forgotten how peaceful life can be.”

The following morning, I show up at Arlene’s office. She looks confused almost as much as Andrea had been when I visited in London.   
“If it isn’t the great Miranda Priestly,” she mocks and rises out of her chair. “To what do I owe the honor?”  
“Nice to see you too Arlene,” I say and proceed into the office without an invitation.  
“I need a favor,” I say.  
“No,” she shakes her head, “no more favors for you. I am still not sure if I regret the last favor. I am not sure keeping Andrea at Elias Clarke was the best decision.”  
I look down, she is wearing a streamlined black pencil skirt with white stitching and black flats.   
“Andrea is a good person Miranda, strong willed and doesn’t always make the best choices but she’s inherently good. She’s going to stay no matter what you throw at her, and know you can throw some bad punches. I don’t know that you deserve her,” she finishes.  
I have now sat down without her invitation again.  
“This favor isn’t for me,” I say choosing to ignore her unsolicited analysis of our relationship.  
“Neither was last time,” she continues.   
“Arlene, I love her, why is that so baffling to people? I’m I completely incapable of loving?” I ask annoyed that she would implicate I only looked after me.  
“Do you really?” she asks taking a seat opposite me, “tea?”   
I shake my head, she still rings the buzzard, “Donna bring us some oolong tea and some of those Argentinean cookies.”  
“Of course,” the voice replies.  
“Thank you so much,” Arlene finishes.   
“I do.” I say. The view outside her window is not as striking as mine. She’s got pictures of her family on the desk, I haven’t been to her office in a long time.   
“And this isn’t like Erick?” she raises her eyebrow, the tea arrives.  
“Oolong is good for you, have some Miranda,” she insists.   
I shake my head again, “No thank you and no this is nothing like Erick.”  
“Are you sure? Because you said you loved him back then too.”  
“Arlene, what I feel for her is true. I love her like I have never loved anyone before. I didn’t set out trying to, and I haven’t been completely fair to her. In fact, I don’t think I deserve her, you’re right. Yet, somehow, she loves me and I don’t know what to do to trust her and make her trust me.” Her face changes and she sips her tea lowering her gaze, exactly like people do when they are listening. I realize that in this weird fit of honesty I was talking about my feelings. I realize this woman and I haven’t been friends in a long time and yet something compels me to keep going.   
“I don’t know what to do to make her happy.”  
“She’s happy with you, Miranda why do you keep doubting it?”  
I shrug.  
“How was the family trip?” she asks.  
“Fine,” I say, “in fact her father gave me a talk about making things work.”  
She smiles, “be honest with her Miranda.”  
I look away, away from the genuine sparkling eyes that look at me.  
“I can’t, honest about what?”  
“Honest about how you feel, but don’t use it to make her feel guilty, she is not at fault for your insecurities. She just wants to be a part of your life, she wants to know about you, before her, she wants to know who you were. She wants to share everything with you. She can pull up a laptop and google your history, your career, your page six marriages but she can’t find how you felt, what you were thinking, what has taken you to her. Tell her,” she says and I reach out to pour myself some tea. Perhaps we could still be friends. Perhaps we could salvage this, Arlene and I, Andrea and I.  
“She’s going to think I’m a monster,” I say.  
Arlene shakes her perfectly poised curls, “no.”  
“Do you hear what you just said? How does stealing your friend’s fiancée, not qualify as that?” I say, what we have been dancing around for years.  
“Yes there is that,” she pauses and grabs a cookie, dusted in white. “that was a long time ago Miranda. I have put it behind me. It all worked out anyway.”  
“You married a good man and well Erick and I failed anyway,” I continue.   
“I would say that …” she starts, “but no I’m above that.”  
“Say it, you know you want to. You have been wanting to for 15 years.”  
She laughs, and nods, “It’s Karma.”  
Surprisingly I match her laugh, we laugh hard and loud. From the glass doors outside the office people would probably wonder what we were saying. The tea cups in our hands splashed a bit, and I hadn’t laughed like that in a long time.  
When the laughter dies she sets the cup down, “I’ll make you a deal.”  
“Tell me,” I say.  
“If you are completely honest with her, you and I can be friends again.”  
“What makes you think I want to be your friend again? “  
“Well … you have all I was supposed to have, the editorship of Runway, and Erick and more fame than I would know what to do with, yet you’re here. And I know you’re having a better time than you usually do.”  
“Perhaps this once you’re right,” I say. She was.  
“Now, about that favor?” She smiles knowing that I have agreed. That we will be friends again.  
“Andrea has been offered a position, a journalism position in London. She doesn’t know I know.”  
“You want me to convince her to take it?” she asks and in an odd way she knew me better than I knew myself.  
“Yes, but not yet. I need help finding …” I pause.   
How can I say it, “a capable editor for a world famous fashion magazine.”  
Her eyes shoot up at me and her brow draws in confusion.  
“Let me explain.


	18. Patience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want you to know  
> one thing. 
> 
> You know how this is:   
> if I look   
> at the crystal moon, at the red branch   
> of the slow autumn at my window,   
> if I touch   
> near the fire   
> the impalpable ash   
> or the wrinkled body of the log,   
> everything carries me to you,

~ It wasn’t easy to follow Arlene’s words. It wasn’t easy to find a moment to sit down with Andrea and tell her all she had ever been asking for. The confession she had wanted since the day at the café, probably since before. That was how I regarded the explanations that she wanted. I would have to tell her that I was all they said I was. That I had divorced my first husband after he asked me to have more children, that I had made Arlene decide between her fiancée and the editorship at Runway and ended up taking both. That I had done it despite the fact that she was the only friend that had been there when my marriage was crumbling. That in between all this I had slept with an assistant and then fired her.   
“I cooked dinner,” I say when she comes home one day a few weeks later.  
“You cooked?” she asks completely baffled. We had a cook, and a maid, and a chef that designed our menus.   
I nod, “I do sometimes when it’s important.”  
“Cara let you? Did the twins eat?”   
“I gave everyone the night off and Caroline and Cassidy are with Stephan.”  
“He really does appreciate them,” she sighs.  
“He does and after they got over his … “  
“Cheating,” she offers not missing a beat to clarify.  
“Right, they appreciate him too.”  
“So…”   
“I owe you an explanation Andrea, an overdue explanation. I think now is as good as ever.”  
“Wow,” she pauses and genuinely looks confused, “I didn’t think I would ever get it.”  
“I just want to ask a few things,” I continue.  
“Of course, you do,” she sighs. I ignore her comment.  
“I want you to listen to everything I have to say, everything until I’m finished.”  
I’m fidgeting, my hands knot. My hands never knot, I don’t fidget. I set both my hands on my thigs and breathe.  
“Okay.”  
“Okay,” I sit down.  
“Stephan cheated on me for a long time,” I start.  
She nods. We eat pasta and salad and wine.   
She smiles, it reminds me of London. We have a theme, pasta and wine.  
“It wasn’t really all his fault, I only married him as a transaction. Just like I said that day in the Hamptons. He made me laugh, he was the image we needed, he seemed like a good father figure. I never paid attention to our marriage. I am not excusing him, but I am not blaming him either. Instead of addressing our issues I wanted payback, to know what it felt like.”  
“That was Paris?” she asks.  
I sense the judgement in her voice.  
“Yes, I thought you would be easy to convince. I wasn’t wrong. I invited you to the suite with an expectation, and you ..”  
“I met it,” she says and though there is no sadness in her voice my heart aches. My heart breaks and bleeds with her words, the cold hard truth did hurt.   
I nod again,“You were supposed to be a one night stand.”  
“I had done it once before between my first husband and my second. I had slept with an assistant and then fired her. I thought I could do the same to you. Not one person would question me, I fired people all the time.”  
“I am not a nice person Andrea, at least not before you. I can say than my first husband is a mediocre piece of shit, but he tried to mend us. I left him, because I did not want any more kids.”  
I look across the table, she hasn’t left. She’s sipping wine. Her large beautiful eyes are looking whimsically at me. I want to stop there, but this is what she wanted right? This is what I’m playing all my cards for. And I tell myself if she leaves, I’m no better off than before. I am a strong woman, I don’t need anyone to validate me or complete me. I am a ENTJ according to the personality test I had to take for an article, rarest kind of personality in woman. If she left, I would be okay. I always was.  
“So… you don’t want more kids?” she asks. I am drawn back to reality.  
“Not with him,” I say. I want to add that with her I would have a soccer team but I don’t. This is not the moment for that.  
“I left him and Arlene was there to help me, we used to work at Harpers Bazar.”  
“You and her used to be friends?” she asks.  
“Hard to believe? We were until I made her fiancée break up with her. Actually I told her that if she wanted to marry him, she’d have to tell the board that she didn’t want the position at Runway. She was supposed to be the editor not me.”  
“Well, I already know you’d do anything to keep that positon,” she says and pours herself more wine.  
I want this to be over, I wish I could know if she’s going to stay or leave. This conversation is out of character for me. I hate questions, I have giving explanations. I think my life has become an extension of my office. I have become the career driven characterization of a woman. I am an example to follow for millions of girls who want to dominate in the boardroom. The example should come with a warning sign. Perhaps if I was a man, all of this would be forgiven. People would say I had leadership qualities, people would say it was my spouses fault for not supporting me, people would say I was cunning and dexterous and strong.   
I don’t stop, I tell her about how Arlene gave up the editorship and how I still married Erick. I tell her how I had the nerve to invite her to the wedding. I tell her about how I dumped him two years later, served him divorce papers at one of his concerts and had his belonging out of the house by the time he got back. I tell her about Stephan, how he really cared. I tell her that I married him because my PR team though it would be good after Erick. I tell her about all the times I have had to blacklist someone because they would publish details about my life, I tell her about my younger sister and how I took the family fortune from under her, except for the house in Maine, we all still share that. I tell her about my older sister and how we don’t talk because I lied to my own mother about her. And when I’m done unearthing all my demons she asks, “When did you know you loved me?”


	19. Crazy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the waves tell the firm coast:  
> 'Everything will be fulfilled.

I wasn’t capable of understanding the simplicity of her question. I took a few steadying breaths.   
It all seemed so out of content, out of comfort. It was as if we had extracted two characters from a novel, something written by Jane Austen. 

“Miranda?” she asks tentatively and softly after a few moments of dead silence go by.   
I wasn’t sure what I had expected. If it had been me, I would have judged every single act. I would have measured it against my own ambitions, against my own morals, against my trust.  
I wasn’t sure what Andrea’s reaction would be, but I sure didn’t’ expect that. I didn’t expect her to bypass everything I had told her and ask for validation of love. Was it because love is patient and kind and forgives everything? Was it because she wanted to know before she left. I find myself looking part her, down to the edge of the room, where the white wall meets the expanse of pearl that I choose to contrast the accents.   
“I’m not sure,” I answer honestly.  
“If I had to pinpoint a moment that I knew, it would be when I saw you at the party with that man,” I don’t want to say his name because he has subsided into the past.  
She nods. The skilled interviewer lets me keep talking. I knew what she was doing, I knew what they teach you in journalism school. I knew that she kept her interviewees always talking. The more silence you give them, them more prone humans are to want to fill the voids. Only we weren’t in an interview, or were we?   
“When you talked about London, I thought the best opportunity for you … and for me to survive unscathed would be to push you out. You could start new, you could find love, and I could keep my status quo.”  
“And I did,” she whispers. It has the vague traces of a reproach. Her dark eyes look up at under a curtain of detailed lashes and purple eyeshadow. She was so different from the young woman I had met years ago. That Andrea didn’t know what make up was, she had no idea who Lagerfeld, Tom Ford or Balenciaga were.   
“I was so conflicted. I gave you the apartment hoping to see you at some point, that you would come home, even if we were acquaintances. I brought you home because I needed you Andrea. I hid all these truths because I am afraid you’ll leave.” I want to ask if she thinks I’m a monster, a laughable charade of fashion. I don’t.  
“And if I leave?” she asks.  
I shake my head, gold earrings sway softly with the tiny movement, they glint in the low light. I focus on them, on the small of their size and magnitude of their influence on anyone’s look.  
“I won’t chase you Andrea, I won’t chase you all over the world anymore. I’m old and tired and I will not decide for us anymore,” I say and it does sound tired, I do feel old.   
She looks down.  
“And the invitations, the announcement?” she asks.   
“I don’t care about them the press will assume I drove away another significant other. Nothing PR can’t control, people forget Andrea.”  
“And the twins?” she keeps her gaze down her voice gets smaller.  
“I would hope that you keep seeing them. The fact that you leave me doesn’t mean you leave them. You’re not obligated to of course but something tells me you will.”  
She turns her gaze up and gives me a small smile, “you won’t tell me why I should stay?”   
“I have chosen for us twice, you know what I want. You know I love you. There is nothing else I can say,” I stop and realize I haven’t drank a single sip from my glass. I do, “but if you stay Andrea, there are two conditions. You have to move in completely, no more halfway here and halfway there. If you stay it’s all in. We talk about the past once, anything and everything, and then we never bring it up. We move forward with the knowledge that our love has a history but not one we can reproach each other. And we promise honesty, not like we’ve been doing so far. We have to swear complete honesty, not just about our relationship but our family, career, everything.”  
I stop, she hasn’t said a single thing.   
She gets up and puts the dishes in the kitchen. I drink the remaining wine in my glass, a rosy tint remains once all the liquid is gone. I fidget with the stem, and when she comes back I don’t look up. She sits down closer to me this time, “I am so sorry Miranda.”  
Time simply stops, there is a shell of silence about me. I can see it, time stopping.   
Against my better judgment I look up at her, at her beautiful chocolate eyes, her delicate contour lines, her delicate lips. I know I’m not crying, not yet. Her voice carries an echo, as if I was hearing her from far away. Her face is devoid of emotion and I wonder if she’s learned it all from me.  
“Don’t… be” I say. She hushes my lips with her index finger.  
“I’m sorry … that you don’t get to be free again. You can’t get rid of me by telling me your secrets.”  
There is a cheeky smile on her face, I want to feel hope. What is she saying? My head spins as if I had drunk a lot, I feel dizzy.  
“If anything,” she starts and she reaches over to wipe the stray tears that are now falling from my eyes. Those damn tears are traitors. “If anything, you have to keep me forever, you wouldn’t want such valuable information running around wild.”  
It’s such a strange sensation, wanting to cry and laugh at the same time. I always thought it was foolish, those emotional displays. I do it anyway. I want to believe I do it with more grace than actresses do it in those romantic comedies but I’m not sure. The tears are far apart, and the soft smiles are barely audible laughs, she joins me.   
“Right,” I say feeling at a complete loss. The overflow of emotions confuses me. I feel happy and anxious, I feel vulnerable and yet strong. I want to keep Andrea safe from every harm, yet oddly enough I want to hide in her embrace.  
“Miranda?” she whispers into my ear. We haven’t moved from our chairs. “You can cry, I promise I’ll never tell anyone.”  
I laugh again, she always knew what to say. It was as if she had been made to fit me.   
“I know,” I whisper and I do. I cry in between laughter. I cry on her shoulder and she doesn’t let go.  
After I dry my eyes and straighten enough to be normal, she brings out two cups of coffee.  
“Isn’t there something you have to tell me, Andrea?” I ask and I don’t want to push but I want to solve it all today. Neat little packages. I was good at that.  
“About?”   
“You know what it is about.”  
She knows exactly what I want to hear. I want to hear about the job offer she got from the London Times, the offer that she got exactly two weeks ago. The one that they headhunted her for and gave her time to think about. The one that if she doesn’t decide this weekend time runs out.   
“I got a job offer,” she rushes out as if she was going to run out of air.  
“From?” I ask just to ask.  
“A newspaper in London but I’m not taking it,” her eyes shine in the low lights.   
“Not just any newspaper The Times,” I correct her.  
“Yes, but it’s not a good time. It’s far and our marriage, I would not want to be far...” she stops I slide a white envelope down the table. I slide it gently, the envelope has no name, no monogram, nothing. Inside is a sheet of cardstock, expensive, monogramed stationary folded in three. When she finishes reading it she looks up, surprise and confusion flash across her pupils.  
I can see the wheels turning.   
“This is fucking crazy, Miranda, you can’t do this. You can’t be serious … this is….” she puts the papers down slowly. I can see a smile but it’s clouded with doubt.  
“It is done,” I say.  
“Runway is your life. What will you ..”  
“You are my life, the twins are my life, being happy is my life,” I correct her again.  
“I don’t understand,” I say.  
“I want to see you be an editor or a star journalist. I want to see you grow Andrea.”  
She still looks confused and worried and the letter still rests in her hand.  
“This is my remarks, the resignation is in,” I say because I sense that she needs reaffirmation of what has happened.  
“You… but and the wedding?” she asks finally grasping at straws.  
“I am pretty sure, they have wedding venues in London,” I say smiling.  
She looks at me, while we sit close together and shakes her head smiling.   
“You’re so unpredictable” she says.  
“I’d like to think I am the contrary since you came along, I’m predictable. This love for you and everything I will do for you is quite predictable,” I say sweetly looking at her and my eyes told her more than the mere expression of my words. She doesn’t reply, she simply nods and meets my smile with a kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more chapter :)


	20. London, Blue and all the years to come...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fountains mingle with the river  
>  And the rivers with the ocean,  
> The winds of Heaven mix for ever  
> With a sweet emotion;  
> Nothing in the world is single,  
> All things by a law divine  
> In one spirit meet and mingle -  
> Why not I with thine?
> 
> See the mountains kiss high Heaven  
> And the waves clasp one another;  
> No sister-flower would be forgiven  
> If it disdained its brother;  
> And the sunlight clasps the earth,  
> And the moonbeams kiss the sea -  
> What are all these kissings worth  
> If thou kiss not me?

We weren’t sure what would have happened if Andrea had said no. If the words following her, “I’m sorry Miranda”, would have actually been that she was leaving. If she had gently laid a kiss on our mother’s cheek, set down the engagement ring on the mahogany dining table, picked up her crocodile bag and softly closed the door with a click and a thud as she left. We weren’t sure what would have happened then.

Innately we know mom would have shouldered on like nothing. She would have dried the tears that would have no doubt fallen. She would have picked up the remaining glasses from the dining room table and walked up the stairs. She never would have told us how much it hurt. She never would have returned the ring to Harry Winston and she never would have withdrawn her resignation from Runway. She would have found a project to occupy her time; a charity, another magazine, a fashion brand. She was Miranda Priestly, she could do whatever the fuck she wanted.

Andrea would most likely have returned to London or France. We are positive her name with time would grace the front page of something; a magazine, a newspaper, a book. She would have probably remained single or with time and anointment returned with Marie. She was meant to be great she was the girl who could do the impossible. If she could get Miranda to resign Runway, she could do anything.

They both would have been fine. All the wounds would have been healed with time but would they have been happy? We could not guarantee it. Caroline and I we asked ourselves that question often. If they didn’t make it, would they be happy? The answer always came in the form of a shrug and uncertainty. The truth is that for a long time we doubted that they would make it. We weren’t sure if the storyline would end like those French foreign films where the lovers never stay together. Those books that win Newberry awards where one lover walks away into the fog of Paris, to a great destiny and one stays behind to live dutifully.  
They were magnets that drew to each other in the vast universe of New York. Perhaps they were soul mates. Perhaps fate had plans drawn up for them in the back of her mind, but it wasn’t going to let them go easy. They were meant to be complicated, it was expected. No one who knew them would expect that two powerhouse personalities would go easy on one another. They were judgmental, perfectionists, talented and yet in their own way both had monumental character flaws. That was what made it worth it.  
There had to be a greater than life romance, an epic story, something worthy of a movie screen. Something where Maria Callas would sing La Traviata as the background music and then it would crescendo in the distance. It had to be so majestic, so grand that it would be written off as fiction.  
From the outside the average onlooker would say it was Miranda who was complicated, hard to understand and who was mean to Andrea. They would say that she had made it hard, pushed her away and took advantage of her whimsical naiveté. Mom had a track record after all. A track record of pushing people away, lovers, friends, husbands, coworkers, even us at times. We knew what the press said about her, the private editrex, hard to get along with, unforgiving, unrelenting and a grade A bitch. We didn’t care, in fact we idolized her. She had broken glass ceilings and created legends. We thought it came with the job. It came with working with the most talented people on earth, photographers, designers, editors and celebrities each bringing their own demands. It came with building a multimillion dollar magazine. During her tutelage and direction Runway had grown into a household name, an accessories brand, an icon, a legend and a revenue giant for Elias Clarke making it one of the most successful publications in history. The personality had just come home with her one day and never left. Yes, it was easy to judge from the outside and say it was mom who had failed, but we knew better. Andrea had her share of faults; she was stubborn, young, immature and full of doubts. For her the differences between them where mountains that she felt intimidated to climb. She failed to see that when mom pushed her away, it was for her own good. It was for her to grow, to explore to live her young life like mom had done already. The truth was that for our mother Andrea was the last chance, she was the love she had waited a life time for. And for Andrea mom was the love of a lifetime, the one that comes in like a hurricane and one is never the same after.  
Did they change each other? Of course, they did. They often challenged and shaped each other like no one had done before. Andrea made mom softer, gentler. She made her reachable, human and able to bare her past and present like she had never done with a lover. Mom made Andrea stronger, harsher, fashionable and elegant. She judged her and prepared her for the real world, the judgmental world that won’t care about much past how you look before they listen. She had made her realize that the world she used to criticize so much is often hard to stay away from and that the people that live in it are not one dimensional like she used to think. 

It wasn’t until after that night, when we came back that we could feel the shift of hope between them. It was so palpable that you could cut it with a knife and store it in a Tupperware for late use. It was as if the axis had shifted, they were full of sunshine and love.  
And yet nothing would have prepared us for the news about the resignation. We could not believe that our mother would leave Runway, the one constant in her life since before we were born. That she would leave what made her Miranda, the place that she built. She had to be the one, Andrea had to be the love that lasts forever; otherwise, mom would never leave it all and follow a lover across the globe. She wasn’t that type of person. This had to be true, unaltered, fairytale love. We were both flabbergasted and beyond glad. They were made for each other, they fitted one another like ying and yang, a sculpture cut in half, two pieces that simply fit. We knew, we had known for a long time. We knew two years before when mom brought Andrea home after dinner. Andrea saw us finishing a school project, we were covered in glitter and glue and blue pieces of cardboard. Andrea leaned in, picked up a cardboard piece and after a brief analysis kneeled saying, “I have an idea.” She started gluing whatever display we were making at that time. She kneeled in black chameusse and red lace, she kneeled in couture Givenchy and pulled up her hair. We looked expectantly at mom, she would normally have thrown out a half witty remark, forced her ex-assistant to get up and leave. Instead she poured them both wine, sat behind her in her tan wool pants and black silk blouse and looked longingly at the young woman sitting on the floor. It wasn’t a one-time occurrence, it was a pattern that would repeat itself, vintage Chanel or new season Marchessa, it was as if mom didn’t care. We realized then that having this woman close, having her be part of our household was more important than any fabric or design.

For all their differences, they were quite similar. Seeing Andrea was like seeing young Miranda; career driven, incredibly talented and yet humble. It was like seeing mom before the world forced her to erect up walls and fill them with spikes.  
After that night, the days and months that followed were a blur. We would remember them just as that, the blur of days that shaped our teenage years. There was a lot of things happening. There was the move. Mom had given Runway a month window for the new editor Sarah Mowers to settle. Andrea left for London three weeks before mom to her new job at the Times headquarters in downtown London and we had gone along with her. We went to live in the house my mother already owned, a turn of the century home near Downing Street. We had only been there a few times, we loved it. The old vaulted ceilings painted in deep blue and the renaissance paintings that hung high around the spiral staircase. The no longer functioning bells in each room that connected to maid’s quarters. We loved the black door and the white columns at the entrance, the lobby, the foyer and the sitting room all had different floors, with grey furniture and large window panes leading to the garden.  
We loved the cold of the winter air, when we moved in. It was colder than New York, greyer than New York, older than New York.  
“It fits us,” Caroline had said.  
There was the press, who had been both amazing, brutal and relentless. We found ourselves knee deep in requests for interviews, shows, magazines and reporter ambushes. Somedays we would avoid all forms of media and other days we would gobble it up. What was the press talking about today? It became a game. Was it about mom’s legacy, was it a one page spread? Was it a collectible magazine? A blog, a celebrity or designer saying how they will miss her. Was it about the affair? Was it a ‘good for them, breaking rules’ kind of story or was it one where Andrea was portrayed as nobody, an opportunist, a gold digger? Or was mom the older black widow? Was it about the wedding, rumors of the resignation? We realized we were in the middle of something grand. It wasn’t simply an editor writing one last Editor’s Note. It was Miranda Priestly passing the baton, it was million girls who wanted to be just like her. Who wanted to break glass ceilings, expectations, who wanted to be CEOs, art directors, fashion moguls. She was a fucking legend, and she was leaving without a clear trace to where. She had created a brand. A brand that even had clothes and glasses out for loyal readers. It was definitely a way to go out, if you enjoy being made to stand up at a Chanel runway show. Who are we kidding, mom totally enjoyed that. We suspect almost as much as she was going to enjoy watching Sarah Mower struggle as the new Editor-in-Chief.  
Then there was the wedding, perhaps the only event we had some control over. The wedding had indeed been an event to file away forever. Mom had worn an empire dress, off-white with beaded pearls and minimal décor. It was elegant and simple, accompanied with Winston diamonds and a bouquet made of white roses and lavender. Andrea had upstaged her for once, but mom had planned it like that. In fact, she had conned her fiancée into wearing an intricate princess gown, organza and tulle designed by none other than the coveted Alberta Ferreti. The rings had been by tradition Cartier, and mom had let Andrea wear one sole necklace, the one she had given her back in Maine. We stood one at each of their sides, in a private ceremony in the country. It was an English manor that belong to some Duke or other, a formal event in which the guest list did no extend past 30 people. Doug, Andrea’s family, Nigel, Emilia, Arlene and members of the fashion world, politics and film. The party after the vows was a blur perhaps because Caroline and I sat by the bar getting drunk for the first time or because all we could remember was their vows. 

“I promise to love you until my last breath, until everything I am and everything I hold ceases to exist. I promise to be faithful, honest and loyal. I promise to never stop seeing your eyes in the cerulean of the ocean and the sparkle of the water. And to stay until death do us part,” Andrea had said and mom had tried not to laugh at the play of words and colors. 

“Andrea, my Andrea. There is not much that I can say to you that you don’t already know. Not much I haven’t said in one way or another. You know me better than I know myself at times, and I can’t understand how I ended up with someone like you. It has been a journey, a long journey where at times we almost gave up. Yet, my darling perhaps for the first time in my life I have understood that phrase that love is patient and kind and that if forgives it all. I will always love you,” mom had said in return and we had never been so much in awe of our mother. We walked the rings down to them, the two simple bands that would seal their pact for eternity. 

Those whirlwind times shaped our life, shaped who we became as people. We could have either blamed it all for stealing our teenage moments, hold it over their heads. Or we could be thankful that we were blessed to grow up not only in wealth but in attention and most importantly in this family we had created. We were in love with Andrea, we were in love with Andrea and mom together. When the rambunctious press died down, when they found a new story to chase and most of the angles had been done; mom started to launch the magazine she had told us about a few weeks after arriving in London. She was going to center it on fashion but there would be a strong presence of social and political issues. She wanted to create a fashion magazine that spoke to the fact that well educated, degree pursuing, powerful women from all stages of influence and power cold be interested in fashion. She wanted to portray the fact that fashion was not just vain, it was not just about how you looked or what colors flattered your complexion it was about influence, about statement, about change and power. That it did not matter what field you worked on from politics to academia, from science to architecture, women could be both wearing couture and command a boardroom. She wanted to make it clear that they could be both brains and beauty.  
She set up a satellite headquarter outside the business district and she also worked from home. She worked from home a lot in the beginning. Blue had started out small almost a cult like following, loyal fans, fashionable politicians, a few (or many) connections my mother had accumulated in her tenure in the fashion world. That was six years ago, now it has a full blown corporate office moved to a Camden. Somewhere in between forcing political commentary from designers, showcasing new talent, volunteering in social programs and putting people from Hillary Clinton to Frances Fox it had grown.  
Starting over in every sense gave mom a new outlook in life, she found the resilience from somewhere. Caroline used tell me it was love, I think it was all the conversations with some of the worlds smartest women, who could switch from quantum physics to the pearl count on the new Saab gown. 

We were completely invested in seeing her create, launch, edit and market. We were completely invested in watching Andre and her grow together, be together, make each other happy. It wasn’t as easy as we make it sound. Our mother was still Miranda Priestly as much as Andrea had changed her. She was still an intolerant, workaholic, perfectionist who could at times hurt with the most well placed, eloquent words. And Andrea was still stubborn and unapologetic. Underneath her now well poised persona, her styled hair, her Manolo pumps and her birkman laptop case, she was still the wild haired journalist who clashed with mom. It wasn’t easy at all, nevertheless they made it work. They were true to their pact made that night in New York, of complete honesty and no reproaching the past.  
We for once felt at ease and we wanted to enjoy that moment as long as we could. We decided to stay home in the University of London, though not as prestigious as Cambridge or Oxford we would be home. I studied literature and fashion and much to mom’s guarded approval wanted to be an editor just like her. Cassidy on the other side wanted to be a lawyer. A human rights lawyer, but we were still deciding. We had a few months until undergrad was over.

“In retrospect, these are the some of the best years of my life,” I say out loud without meaning to.

Andrea and Caro turn to look at me while mom only smiles looking at all three of us from across the round marble table that sits outside the new offices for the magazine. She’s wearing a charcoal Chanel jacket, with tiny specs of different colors that thread in between. Her skirt matches the jacket while her blouse is white silk and peaks out. She’s holding Margaret on her arms, letting the young girl play with her gold statement necklace. Margaret is four, she is the new apple of our eyes. The baby sister that our mothers adopted a little over three years ago. She’s come to light up our world even more. When she first came we felt a breath that we didn’t know were holding escape. Caroline and I realized that in the back of our mind a tiny voice was still afraid that they would break up. That one day we’d come home to mom crying saying Andrea had left or we’d get a call from Andrea saying that she was leaving. It didn’t happen, they withstood the storm. That was what true love looked like in our eyes. It wasn’t perfect; it didn’t mean they would never hurt each other or make mistakes. It didn’t mean they would never cry; it meant that they would be strong, forgiving and learn how to withstand the pain. They fought, they made mistakes, they were not perfect by any measure. But they also loved each other more than life itself. Margaret was only the logical addition to so much love.  
She was funny, and moody and her diamond blue eyes resembled mom’s. Her little blond head turns to look at the patio entrance to the new office building that will be inaugurated in a week. The name of the magazine splashed across the top of the glass doors that led inside. Mom looks up along with Margaret to the steel colored office tower that has just been bought, remodeled and rebranded as corporate headquarters for Blue. It isn’t Elias Clarke, there aren’t 30 floors of publishing experts, or a whole IT department but it is even grander for us. Blue is a modest building with eight floors, the first floor is a lease to cafeteria and boutique store. The rest are all offices, the closet, publishing, art, editorial and executive. There are five boardrooms in the fifth floor, with matching beige leather chairs, multimedia equipped and gorgeous decorations. There is one more in the top floor, wedged between the two main offices. One is mom’s, one will be for the EIC and then there are six more offices in that level. 

“Yes, they have,” mom answers my earlier comment airily like she always does.  
Gabby who still works with us comes over to drop a few coffees on the table and takes Margaret out of mom’s arms. It was time for her to go home and finished her timed routine, dinner, bath, bed. We all wave goodbye as the precocious four-year old waves and bids goodbye calling our names; “goodbye mom, goodbye mommy, goodbye caro, goodbye cassi!”  
After the momentary distraction fades mom turns over to us completely serious and asks, “do you really think so Cassidy? Do you think these have been the best years? Caroline?” she asks expectantly as if whatever we say would validate her choices. The woman who needs no validation from anyone in the world needs validation from us. I nod enthusiastically, “I do, I really do. Not that we weren’t great before but all the changes, all the challenges, being here, seeing you start something so different, seeing Andy it has shaped my life mom.” I say honestly. “I agree with every single word,” Caroline says. We all expect something sassy to come after but it doesn’t. It is as if this one carefree afternoon hanging out at what will soon be the busy hub of our mother’s pet project has turned into a serious moment of introspection. That this day before the patio fills with celebrities and designers and media for the ribbon cutting will be one we will remember for time to come.  
“And you Andrea? Has it been worth it all?” mom asks looking across the table giving her a whimsical smile. Andrea, who has just agreed to come aboard as Features editor, smiles instantly. Neither Caroline or I are holding our breath, we stopped doing that a long time ago. Her and I, we are vastly different. We are like night and day. We are different and we are alike, just like Andrea and mom. We will always be united by common experiences and friendship, just like they will always be united by promises and their sweeping love. We were sure of that. We were sure they would last. I was sure of it.  
Andrea nods ever so slowly, reaching across the table to take her lovers hands, “You know it has. You have always been worth everything to me.”  
Mom smiles nostalgically now and the bare blue of her eyes reddens, we know it is all too much for her. The emotions of the new offices, the success her magazine has had, Margaret’s birthday last week, the support of Nigel who will join as the new EIC and Leslie who has stayed as her loyal PR person, having us all here, Andrea saying what she’s saying.  
“I feel the same,” mom says and we all know tears threaten to come out. “I feel the same about everything you all have said.”  
“I blame this all on Caroline and Cassidy,” Andrea disrupts untangling her hands from our mother and trying to tickle Caroline who is closest to her. Caroline shrieks as if she were five years old, “mom, mom help!”  
Mom laughs, “I refuse to.”  
Laughter erupts from all of us as we get up and walk toward the building. We walk into the top floor to see mom’s finished office. Andrea tries to use the same tickling technique with me but I’m too fast and again we laugh. Trust Andrea to always know what to do, trust her to always sweep in and save mom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to do the last chapter in the voice of Cassidy, because it gave a perfect view point into the future of their lives. It was a way to cast a light on how it looked from outside and end with a voice of both characters.  
> I hope you like it.  
> *  
> I've also edited most chapters, minimal story edits that make the story flow better... if anyone wants to read it all again :)  
> *  
> That's all ~


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